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EASTERN  EXPLORATION 
PAST  ANP  FUTURE 


EASTERN 
EXPLORATION 

PAST   AND    FUTURE 
LECTURES  AT  THE  ROYAL  INSTITUTION 


BY 

W.    M.    FLINDERS    PETRIE 

Hon.   D.C.L.,   LL.D.  ;  F.R.S./I-.B.A. 


NEW  YORK 

ROBERT   M.    McBRIDE   AND    COMPANY 

1918 


P^inM  in  Great  Britain 

TV 


CONTENTS 

PACE 

Palestine            -          -          -  ■  -  "       ^ 

christian  period     .          -  -  •  -       3 

herodian  and  greek  age  -  -    ,      -  -       5 

jewish  age    ...  -  -  -       9 

egyptian  influence           -  -  -  -     18 

the  philistines       -          -  "  •  -     21 

amorite  civilization          -  -  •  -24 

THE  CANAANITES           -               .  .  -  -        3° 

Mesopotamia       -          -          -  -  -  -     39 

SASSANIANS  AND   PARTHIANS  -  -  -        40 

PERSIA   AND   BABYLON                -  -  -  -         44 

THE  HITTITES  AND  KASSITES  -  -  -        49 

HAMMURABI   AND   HIS   DATE  -  -  -  "54 
SARGON  AND  NARAM-SIN 
SUMERIAN  CIVILIZATION 


66 
68 


ELAM  THE  SOURCE       -  -  -  -  -73 

The  Future        -  -  -  -  -  -     8i 


84 
88 


A.  MONUMENTS  .  -  -  - 

B.  SITES  -  -  -  -  - 

c.  accidental  discoveries           -  "  -     90 

d.  the  board  for  antiquities     -  -  "9^ 

e.  direction  of  research           -  "  "93 

f.  museum  administration          -  -  -     96 

g.  government  monopoly            -  "  *    '99 
h.  terms  for  scientific  excavatio!^  -  "    i03 
j.  finance    -          -          -          -  -  -    106 

k.  jerusalem  problems     -          -  "  -    108 

Letters  of  Reference  used  in  the  Text  -  -    114 

Index        -          -          -          .          -  -  -    "5 


^■\  r^  «■». 


SOME  WORKS  BY  PROF.  FLINDERS  PETRIE 

Religion  of  Ancient  Egypt,    is.     Constable, 

Religion  and  Conscience  in  Egypt.    2s.  6d.    Methuen. 

Syria  and  Egypt.    2s.  6d.    Methuen. 

Personal  Religion  in  Egypt.    2s.  6d.    Harper, 

Revolutions  of  Civilisation.     2s.  6d.    Harper, 

Arts  and  Crafts  in  Ancient  Egypt.    45  plates.    5s.    Foulis. 

The  Growth  of  the  Gospels.    2s,  6d.    Murray. 

Egypt  and  Israel.     54  figs.    2s.  6d.    S,P.C.K, 

Photographic  Catalogues. 

Amulets.  1,700  figs.  21s.  Constable. 
Scarabs.  2,900  figs.  32s.  Constable, 
Tools  and  Weapons.    3,200  figs.    35s.     Constable. 


VI 


PALESTINE 


PALESTINE 

The  political  situation  in  the  East  as  now  de- 
veloped, and  the  future  possibilities  before  us, 
constitute,  perhaps,  the  heaviest  responsibility 
for  historical  study  that  has  ever  fallen  on  any 
nation.  We  may  have  in  our  hands  the  develop- 
ment of  the  sites  of  the  greatest  ancient  civiliza- 
tions, the  parents  of  our  own  knowledge,  learning, 
and  religion;  and  it  will  rest  upon  us  to  settle 
whether  we  will  preserve  and  understand  that 
past,  or  whether  we  will  deliberately  let  it  be 
destroyed.  There  are  no  ifs  and  buts  in  the 
question ;  unless  we  take  long-sighted  and  effective 
measures  at  once — this  year — ^we  promote  the 
destruction  of  the  history  of  past  ages  of  civiliza- 
tion. When  once  the  security  of  life  and  pror 
duce,  without  extortion,  is  assured,  the  rapid 
development  of  unworked  lands  is  certain  in 
the  present  age.  We  must  not  have  repeated 
in  Mesopotamia  and  Palestine  the  ghastly  re- 
sults of  our  inefficiency,  which  we  have  exhibited 
in  Cyprus  and  in  Egypt.  Of  the  irremediable 
mischief  and  loss  under  British  management  in 


2  PALESTINE 

the  past,  I  shall  point  the  lessons  in  the  third 
of  these  lectures,  when  dealing  with  the  difficult 
questions  of  future  administration.  In  the 
present  lecture  on  Palestine,  and  the  succeeding 
one  on  Mesopotamia,  the  position  of  our  know- 
ledge regarding  each  period  will  be  outlined,  with 
reference  to  future  researches,  and  what  we  may 
hope  yet  to  learn  from  them. 

The  history  of  the  intellectual  endeavour  of 
mankind,  of  the  heritage  which  we  enter  on  un- 
consciously and  enjoy  without  toil,  should  be 
one  of  the  chief  interests  of  thinking  men.  It 
is  the  crown  and  flower  of  the  natural  sciences, 
the  most  complex  product  of  the  most  complex 
of  organisms.  It  is  our  own  mental  ancestry, 
and  by  its  course  it  gives  the  surest  anticipation 
of  our  mental  posterity. 

Recall  for  a  moment  the  many  forms  of  re- 
search which  unite  in  forming  a  picture  of 
mankind.  There  is  first  the  skeleton  of  exact 
historical  knowledge  and  chronology,  necessary 
to  give  precision  and  effect  to  all  the  rest  of  the 
view.  There  is  the  most  accessible  product  of 
man,  his  art,  which  tells  so  much  of  his  abilities, 
perceptions,  and  thoughts,  from  the  palaeo- 
lithic ages  down  to  our  present.  There  is  the 
groundwork  of  ideas  and  ideals,  religious,  politi- 
cal, and  social,  which  depend  almost  entirely 
on  written  record.     There  is  the  great  field  of 


CHRISTIAN  PERIOD  3 

economics:  how  much  a  nation  produced,  how 
the  material  was  apportioned  between  different 
classes,  what  were  the  facilities  of  life,  how  far 
conditions  depended  on  the  energy  of  ability. 
There  is  the  extent  of  knowledge:  how  science 
was  developed,  what  power  men  had  over  the 
products  and  forces  of  nature.  And,  most 
nearly  touching  us,  there  is  our  inheritance  of 
all  this  endeavour,  how  it  has  affected  our  own 
lives  and  surroundings.  All  this  we  demand  to 
know,  especially  of  those  lands  and  races  to 
whom  our  debt  is  the  greatest.  Babylonia  is 
the  mother  of  our  commerce  and  our  science, 
Palestine  is  the  mother  of  our  religious  percep- 
tions. It  is  these  countries  for  which  we  require 
now  a  just  stewardship  of  their  past. 

It  will  perhaps  be  the  more  intelligible  plan 
if  we  begin  our  review  of  the  situation  by  looking 
at  the  later  and  better-known  ages  to  begin  with, 
and  then  deal  with  the  more  distant  past.  The 
Christian  period  in  Syria  has  left  many  beautiful 
buildings,  in  an  astonishing  state  of  preservation. 
The  insecurity  of  the  nomad  raids  on  the  empire 
of  Justinian,  culminating  in  the  Arab  conquest, 
drove  out  the  population  which  bordered  on  the 
desert,  and  their  houses  and  churches  were  left 
almost  complete.  The  American  University  ex- 
peditions of  1900  and  19 10  have  recorded  a 
large  region  full  of  buildings  in  Northern  Syria; 


4  PALESTINE 

south  of  Hebron  I  have  walked  through  a  town, 
still  inhabited,  where  the  houses  were  obviously 
.Roman,  and  have  seen  a  large  hall  with  the 
stone  roof  still  perfect  over  it.  It  will  be  said, 
if  these  things  thus  remain,  they  will  continue 
without  our  help.  They  will  not.  The  beautiful 
churches  of  North  Syria  discovered  and  pub- 
lished by  de  Vogiie  half  a  century  ago  have  been 
largely  wiped  out  of  existence  by  Circassian 
colonists,  who  quarried  them  to  pieces.  And 
are  we  less  barbarous,  when  an  EngHshman 
boasts  that  in  exploiting  the  Mareotis  district  he 
only  needs  to  pull  to  pieces  a  Roman  settlement 
to  get  enough  material  to  build  his  new  house  ? 
Are  all  these  splendid  remains  of  the  early 
Christian  period  to  be  left  as  quarries  for  every 
squatter  that  takes  to  exploiting  a  free  and 
civilized  Syria  ? 

In  Galilee  there  are  the  great  synagogues  of 
Capernaum  and  Chorazin,  built  of  marbly  lime- 
stone, finely  carved  with  figures  of  animals  and 
fruits.  Are  these — the  very  buildings,  probably, 
in  which  Christ  taught — to  be  left  to  the  mercy 
of  the  next  needy  settler  ? 

Another  class  of  remains,  which  seems  to 
belong  specially  to  the  south  of  Palestine,  is  that 
of  the  mosaic  pavements.  There  was  a  great 
development  of  these  in  the  age  of  Justinian. 
The  most  important  is  the  great  mosaic  map  of 


HERODlAN  AGE  5 

Palestine  at  Medeba,  east  of  the  Dead  Sea,  some- 
what injured  in  the  finding,  but  still  almost  com- 
plete (J.).  Other  fine  pavements  were  lately 
found  near  Mount  Nebo  and  at  Bittir,  near 
Jerusalem,  the  latter  with  each  panel  of  the 
pattern  bearing  the  name  of  a  donor,  like  the 
pavement  of  the  Cathedral  of  Grado  (R.  B.,  vii.). 
Other  pavements  with  Christian  signs  and  in- 
scriptions have  been  found  on  the  Mount  of 
Olives,  and  near  Hebron;  others,  again,  on  the 
road  from  Egypt,  and  near  Beersheba.  The 
latter  was  turned  up  by  Australian  soldiers  when 
trench-digging.  Nobly  they  did  their  unexpected 
duty,  and  spent  nine  days,  continually  bombed 
by  aeroplane,  while  they  carefully  raised  it,  and 
despatched  it  safely  to  Cairo,  to  await  their 
triumphal  return  to  Australia.  This  is  a  most 
hopeful  sign  of  the  interest  that  intelligent  men 
will  take  in  preservation;  those  who  will  risk 
their  lives  over  such  work  will  not  grudge  a 
halfpenny  in  the  pound  on  their  taxes  to  save 
things  from  destruction. 

An  important  work  of  the  Herodian  age  is  the 
Temple  and  Basilica  at  Samaria,  recently  dis- 
covered (H.  T.).  The  temple  was  erected  in 
honour  of  Augustus  and  the  Roman  State,  with 
a  statue  for  the  worship  of  the  Emperor.  A  long 
colonnade  wound  round  the  side  of  the  hill  to 
the  Forum,  showing  that  the  taste  for  such  civic 


6  PALESTINE 

decoration-^Well  known  at  Palmyra — ^was  al- 
ready at  work.  A  hippodrome  also  marks  the 
essentially  Hellenistic  nature  of  this  resettle- 
ment; probably  it  was  encouraged  by  Herod  to 
choke  the  orthodox.  Samaritan  worship,  and  to 
render  that  city  the  more  distasteful  to  the  Jew. 
The  excavation  by  Dr.  Reisner  is  an  example  of 
what  should  be  done,  in  clearing  every  floor-level 
of  buildings  separately,  such  as  three  successive 
floorings  in  the  basilica,  each  dated  by  coins, 
inscriptions,  and  pottery.  The  thorough  clear- 
ing stratum  by  stratum  was  very  fully  carried 
out  by  Bliss  and  Macalister  in  the  excavations  of 
Lachish,  Gezer,  and  other  cities.  Such  is  the 
only  method  by  which  the  historical  results  can 
be  secured.  The  opposite  pole  is  the  trenching 
through  mounds,  regardless  of  the  direction  of 
buildings,  as  has  been  generally  the  fate  of  Meso- 
potamian  and  Persian  sites. 

Further  south  a  fine  record  of  the  rock  tombs 
of  Petra,  the  Roman  camps  and  roads  in  Moab, 
the  stone  cities  of  Bosra  and  those  of  the  Hauran, 
has  been  made  in  Brunnow  and  Domaszewski's 
three  volumes  of  Provincia  Arabia^  1904.  The 
fulness  of  plans  and  photographs  in  this  survey 
is  final  as  to  the  general  subject.  They  included 
a  set  of  photographs  of  the  marvellous  carvings 
of  the  Palaceof  Meshetta  in  Moab — of  the  seventh 
or  ninth  century  a.d. — ^which  have  since  been 
rem  oveci  to  Berlin. 


GREEK:  PERIOD  f 

Regarding  future  prospects  in  Syria,  we  may 
still  hope  for  a  great  deal  from  buried  inscriptions, 
especially  in  the  region  of  the  Christian  towns 
and  churches  which  have  not  yet  been  despoiled. 
Nothing  has  been  done  in  clearing  up  these 
buildings.  Papyri  and  MSS.  we  cannot  hope 
for,  except  where  a  building  has  ^remained 
roofed;  but  in  a  country  where  stone  takes  the 
place  of  wood,  even  for  doors,  there  should  be 
much  to  seek  for  amid  the  ruins.  The  whole 
south  country  should  be  sounded  carefully  in  all 
sites  to  find  mosaic  pavements,  so  as  to  order 
their  preservation,  as  they  are  very  liable  to  be 
destroyed  in  erecting  new  buildings.  Nothing 
has  yet  been  done  in  excavating  Petra  or  Pal- 
myra; the  work  would  be  light,  as  there  is  no 
depth  of  earth  to  remove,  and  much  might  be 
learned  of  the  Semites  under  Roman  rule. 

Of  the  Greek  period  a  good  deal  has  been  re- 
covered. Perhaps  the  most  striking  objects  are 
the  painted  tombs  of  Mareshah,  of  the  Alex- 
andrian type  (P.  M.).  The  decoration  with 
figures  of  animals,  each  with  the  name  over  it, 
shows  evident  connection  with  the  animals  and 
names  in  the  mosaic  of  Palestrina.  There  must 
have  been  some  common  source,  of  a  portable 
nature,  for  this  painting  in  the  Judaean  hills 
and  a  mosaic  in  Italy.  Perhaps  the  source  was 
the  illustration  of  Aristotle's  Natural  History; 


8  PALESTINE 

no  other  such  work  is  known  before  this  date. 
These  tombs  were  found  in  the  extensive  plunder- 
ing and  wreckage  of  the  cemetery  at  Beit  Jibrin 
by  the  natives.  No  check  was  put  on  this  de- 
struction; but,  at  least,  no  wreckage  like  this 
should  be  tolerated  in  future.  The  ancient  city 
of  Mareshah  (Tell  Sandahannah),  excavated  by 
MacaHster  (B.M.),  has  provided  a  complete  plan 
of  a  Seleucidan  town  of  about  six  acres.  At  Tell 
Zakariyeh  a  town  of  the  same  age,  on  the  top  of 
earlier  towns,  yielded  a  curious  mermaid-like 
figure  of  the  .fish-goddess  Derketo  or  Atargatis. 
She  was  worshipped  at  Hierapolis  in  Northern 
Syria  and  at  Askelon,  where  there  were  sacred 
fish-ponds.  A  curious  reference  to  that  lately 
appeared  in  a  papyrus  list  of  temples  in  the 
Fayum,  where  one  was  to  Atargatis  Bethen- 
nunis;  this  refers  to  the  fish-ponds  of  Askelon 
which  were  near  the  modern  Beit  Hanun,  which 
place  has  evidently  kept  the  ancient  name. 
This  would  be  an  interesting  site  to  examine,  as 
we  thus  know  closely  where  the  temple  of  this 
Syrian  goddess  was  placed. 

In  the  ruins  of  Samaria  a  Greek  town  has  been 
identified,  with  an  inscription  of  King  Demetrios. 
At  Jericho  Greek  pottery  has  also  been  found 
(E.) ;  and  this  flourishing  age  of  the  ancient  world 
has  doubtless  left  traces  in  most  places  of  im- 
portance.    At  Gezer  a  group  of  tombs  of  the 


THE  SCYTHIANS  0 

early  Greek  age,  about  700  to  650  b.c.  (miscalled 
Philistine  tombs)  show  just  the  same  styles  of 
things  as  in  a  North  Syriaji  cemetery  near 
Aleppo.  Thus  it  is  clear  that  in  the  seventh 
century  b.c.  trade  had  unified  the  general  civiliza- 
tion from  end  to  end  of  Syria. 

What  we  should  seek  especially  in  this  period 
is  light  on  that  great  Scythian  migration  which 
made  its  centre  at  Beth  Shean  (named  Scytho- 
polis  from  the  invaders)  in  the  valley  of  Jezreel, 
near  its  fall  into  the  Jordan.  What  kind  of  civili- 
zation these  people  had  who  swept  across  the 
early  Greek  world,  what  region  they  came  from, 
how  they  stood  to  the  natives  of  the  lands  they 
subdued,  what  became  of  these  people  who  held 
all  Syria  for  twenty-eight  years — these  are  some 
of  the  questions  which  there  is  the  best  chance 
of  solving  at  their  main  settlement  of  Scythopolis. 
The  Greek  period  also  includes  all  the  restoration 
under  Ezra  and  Nehemiah  and  the  championship 
of  the  Maccabees.  Any  consolidation  of  the 
written  record  by  actual  remains  would  be  very 
welcome. 

Before  this  lies  the  main  Jewish  period,  from 
the  entry  to  the  captivity,  and  much  has  been 
recovered  of  the  age  of  the  kings.  The  main 
result  has  been  the  unearthing  and  planning  of 
two  large  palaces,  Jewish  and  heathen.  At 
Samaria  the  palace  was  traced  in  three  periods 


10  PALESTINE 

of  building,  which  are  well  identified  as  of  Omri, 
of  Ahab,  and  of  Jehu  and  Jeroboam  II.  (H.  T.). 
Several  courses  of  stone  building  remained  from 
each  period,  one  over  the  other.  The  earliest 
masonry — that  of  Omri — ^was  massive,  but  not 
finely  finished.  Over  it  that  of  Ahab  was  of  finer 
work,  and  was  much  extended  down  the  western 
and  southern  slopes  of  the  hill^;  it  was  well  dated 
by  an  Egyptian  vase  of  Usarken  II.,  and  vdth 
this  were  many  ostraka  written  in  a  free  cursive 
hand.  This  free  writing  shows  the  source  of  the 
cursive  forms  of  the  rock  inscription  of  the  Siloam 
tunnel.  The  general  type  of  the  palace  was  that 
of  a  single  great  building  with  large  courts  sur- 
rounded by  rooms ;  this  is  much  like  the  palace  of 
Apries,  which  I  found  at  Memphis.  This  great 
stone  fortress  and  massive  wall  around  the 
whole  city  made  the  place  impregnable  to  ancient 
warfare,  and  only  starvation  could  reduce  such 
cities.  After  the  capture  of  Samaria  there 
followed  an  age  of  poor  brick  buildings  in 
Babylonian  style,  and  a  city  wall  of  stone  facings 
filled  in  with  mud,  course  by  course.  Such  clumsy 
and  poor  work  seems  evidently  that  of  the 
colonists  planted  there  by  Sargon,  720  to  670  B.C. 
The  other  palace  is  that  of  Megiddo,  Tell 
Mutesellim  (S.  M.).  The  walls  were  from  three 
to  five  feet  thick;  not  much  was  found  except 
a  fine  seal  with  a  lion,  inscribed  "  for  Shema 


HEBREW  CITIES  li 

servant  of  Jeroboam";  this  is,  perhaps,  the 
eariiest  Hebrew  inscription.  Over  the  level  of 
this  palace  was  a  great  temple  built  of  massive 
blocks;  in  it  were  some  of  the  vessels  of  the 
temple  service.  Above  this,  again,  was  a  mass 
of  houses  of  the  age  just  before  the  Greek  occu- 
pation. Many  Egyptian  scarabs  of  the  eigh- 
teenth to  the  twenty-third  dynasties  were  found 
here. 

Close  to  Megiddo  is  Ta'anak.  Of  this  a  small 
part  has  been  cleared  (S.  T.).  The  striking  thing 
here  was  a  hollow  altar  of  pottery  about  three 
feet  high,  with  air-holes  up  the  front  and  sides, 
and  with  five  figures  of  quadrupeds  in  relief  on 
each  side;  the  style  of  it  is  almost  Mexican  in 
its  crudelity.  It  is  assigned  to  probably  700  B.C., 
and  may  be  due  io  some  of  the  barbarous  oriental 
colonists  brought  by  the  Assyrians. 

The  most  complete  clearance  of  a  Hebrew  town 
was  at  Gezer  (M.).  It  is  marked  by  the  old 
Canaanite  high  place  being  disused,  and  built 
over  with  houses.  The  arrangement  of  the  town 
was  crowded  and  unwholesome,  and  its  effect 
on  the  people  is  shown  by  the  prevalence  of 
diseases,  as  seen  on  the  skeletons.  The  Jews 
entering  Palestine  from  desert  life  do  not  seem 
to  have  understood  town  life  better  than  the 
Arabs  of  later  ages.  Iron  came  into  common  use 
early  in  the  times  of  the  kings;  and  the  growth 


12  PALESTINE 

of  mechanical  means  in  other  countries  during 
that  age  is  largely  reflected  in  the  tools  found  in 
Palestine. 

The  pre-Israelite  worship  was  popularly  con- 
tinued during  the  monarchy.  At  Gezer  the 
pottery  figures  of  Ashtareth  were  frequent ;  and 
this  agrees  with  the  result  at  Beth  Shemesh  and 
Mareshah  (Sandahannah),  where  the  goddess 
appears  at  the  same  period.  This  is  what  might 
be  expected  from  the  defiance  of  the  Jewish 
women  to  "Jeremiah :  "We  will  certainly  do 
whatsoever  thing  goeth  forth  out  of  our  own 
mouth,  to  burn  incense  unto  the  queen  of  heaven, 
and  to  pour  out  drink  offerings  unto  her,  as  we 
have  done,  we,  and  our  fathers,  our  kings,  and 
our  princes,  in  the  cities  of  Judah,  and  in  the 
streets  of  Jerusalem  "  (xliv.  17).  The  exclusive 
monotheism  of  the  Jew  is  the  product  of  the 
captivity;  the  period  of  the  kings  was  one  of 
mixed  worships,  in  which  there  was  only  a 
gradual  suppression  of  official  polytheism,  while 
in  common  life  the  people  were  as  easy-going 
in  their  worship  as  their  Canaanite  neighbours. 
This  tone  is  plainly  seen  in  the  Aswan  papyri, 
where  a  Jewess  named  "  Trust  in  Yahveh  '* 
swore  by  a  local  Egyptian  goddess  in  a  contract 
with  an  Egyptian.  Akin  to  this  was  also  the 
prevalence  of  the  High  Places  for  worship  during 
the  monarchy.     Even  the  pious  kings,  who  are 


JEW  AND  GENTILE  13 

praised  by  the  orthodox,  did  not  suppress  the 
local  worships;  and  these  are  noticed  in  the 
special  plaint  of  Elijah:  "  I  have  been  very- 
jealous  for  the  Lord  God  of  hosts;  because 
the  children  of  Israel  have  forsaken  thy  cove- 
nant, thrown  down  thine  altars,  and  slain  thy 
prophets  ''  (i  Kings  xix.  10).  Thus  the  particu- 
larity of  the  later  Jew  about  ignoring  other 
gods  and  other  centres  of  worship  outside 
Jerusalem  was  a  growth  later  than  the  golden 
age  of  the  monarchy. 

Other  excavations  of  importance  (S.  M.)  have 
been  at  Tell  Zakariyeh,  when  an  irregular  for- 
tress, about  100  by  200  feet  in  size,  has  six 
towers  around  it;  also  at  Beth  Shemesh,  where 
a  great  city  wall  and  bastions  remain  up  to 
twelve  or  fifteen  feet  high.  At  Jericho  it  is 
remarkable  that  in  the  Israelite  town  the  pottery 
was  of  the  Cypriote  style  rather  than  the  native 
Jewish  (P.  F.,  19 10).  This  seems  to  point  to  the 
Jordan  Valley  being  more  accessible  commercially 
down  the  valley  from  Lake  Merom  and  Tyre 
than  it  was  across  the  mountains  of  Judaea  and 
the  wilderness  east  of  that. 

Little  has  been  found  of  actual  documents 
in  this  age.  Two  cuneiform  tablets  at  Gezer 
(M.)  only  refer  to  business,  in  649  B.C.  One  is  a 
bill  of  sale,  the  other  the  sale  of  a  field.  The 
main  monument  of  the  royal  period  is  the  tunnel 


14  PALESTINE 

and  inscription  of  Siloam,  probably  due  to  Heze- 
kiah.  The  account  of  the  tunnel  was  only  an 
unofficial  graffito  scratched  on  the  wall,  without 
any  name  or  date ;  yet  is  it  the  main  document  of 
the  kingly  age.  Its  fate  is  a  lesson  to  us.  So 
soon  as  it  became  well  known  and  much  noticed, 
it  was  attacked  and  broken  up  in  an  attempt  to 
cut  it  from  the  rock.  The  lack  of  any  proper 
custody  exposed  it  to  destruction  from  which 
only  fragments  have  been  rescued,  and  pieced 
together  in  Constantinople.  So  will  perish  every- 
thing of  value  that  is  not  safeguarded. 

A  most  interesting  picture  of  this  age  in  the 
north  of  Palestine  is  preserved  by  the  account 
of  an  Egyptian  envoy  sent  to  get  cedar  from 
Lebanon.  In  iioo  B.C.,  the  midst  of  the  age 
of  the  Judges,  the  Theban  king  was  sending  an 
envoy  to  Syria  to  get  cedar  trunks  for  making 
the  boat  of  Amen.-  The  envoy,  Unuamen, 
was  helped  on  his  way  by  the  King  of  Tanis,  who 
provided  him  with  a  boat  and  sailors.  At  Dir, 
one  of  the  Syrian  ports,  he  was  robbed  of  his 
pay-chest  by  a  sailor ;  and  the  chief  of  the  town 
acknowledged  responsibility  if  the  thief  was  of 
that  country,  showing  a  large  regard  for  inter- 
national law.  After  waiting  some  months  trying 
to  catch  the  thief,  the  envoy  tried  to  return, 
but  was  taken  before  the  chief.  The  interview 
was  in  the  castle  by  the  sea ;  the  chief  sat  on  a 


NATIVE  STATES  15 

throne  with  an  open  window  behind  him,  letting 
in  the  cool  Seabreeze,  and  "  the  waves  of  the 
great  sea  broke  behind  him.'*  The  chief  stated 
that  there  were  twenty  boats  from  Tanis  in  his 
port,  and  many  from  Sidon,  showing  considerable 
trade  going  on  there.  The  chief  demanded  in 
return  for  the  cedars  six  boats  of  Egyptian  goods 
to  be  sold  at  the  native  dealers.'  To  check  the 
assertions  of  the  envoy  about  past  transactions, 
the  chief  ordered  the  journals  of  his  ancestors  to 
be  brought  out,  and  foiind  that  £400  worth  of 
silver  (equal  to  many  thousands  in  ancient 
values)  had  been  paid  by  the  Egyptians.  This 
shows  that  full  annals  were  kept  at  this  Syrian 
port.  Annoyed  at  the  cedars  lying  on  the  shore, 
the  chief  gave  permission  for  the  envoy  to  take 
them  if  a  present  is  brought.  The  envoy  then 
went  to  Egypt,  and  returned  in  the  next  year 
with  presents  of  gold  and  silver  vases,  leather, 
stuffs,  and  dried  fish.  Then  300  men  and  300 
oxen  were  supplied  to  drag  the  cedars  down  to 
the  coast.  Pirates  came  to  the  port  to  seize 
the  envoy;  he  escaped  to  a  queen  ruling  on  the 
Orontes,  and  later  travelled  down  to  Tyre  and 
Byblos.  This  papyrus  gives  an  insight  on  the 
condition  of  Syria :  the  long-standing  civilization 
of  the  coast  towns,  with  regular  annals,  the 
respect  for  law,  and  the  government  rights 
over  the  forests. 


i6  PALESTINE 

Of  this  Israelite  age  there  is  a  great  deal  still 
to  be  learned :  we  have  as  yet  only  a  few  samples. 
There  was  evidently  much  business  going  on, 
probably  written  on  clay  tablets,  which  might  be 
recovered.  There  were  also  evidently  annals  of 
the  petty  states,  which  we  may  hope  some  day 
to  read.  On  the  Jewish  history  there  may  be 
much  more  underground  than  all  we  now  have 
in  written  record.  But  we  shall  never  recover 
it  if  digging  is  left  to  natives  and  treasure- 
hunters,  such  as  the  mischievous  and  futile 
expedition  of  six  years  ago.  So  far,  what  has 
been  done  about  Jerusalem  is  almost  entirely 
topographical.  Fixing  the  positions  of  walls 
and  drains  and  cisterns  has  been  about  all  that 
is  practicable.  This  is  valuable  work  as  leading 
to  the  right  ground  for  thorough  research. 

Whenever  it  may  be  possible  to  bare  large 
spaces  in  Jerusalem,  through  the  great  depth 
of  ruins  of  all  ages — the  80  feet  of  ground  piled 
against  the  outer  wall  of  the  Temple  area,  or 
the  deep  mass  filling  up  the  Tyropoean  valley 
— when  that  is  clear  we  shall  be  able  to  recon- 
struct part  of  the  city  of  the  kings.  The  tops 
of  the  hills,  Moriah  and  others,  have  been  so 
repeatedly  stripped  of  their  buildings  that  prob- 
ably very  little  can  be  found  there,  except  lines 
of  rock-drafting  for  foundations.  The  masses  of 
material    overthrown   from   the   hills   into    the 


DESTRUCTION  OF  TEMPLES        17 

valleys  are  the  natural  reservoirs  of  history. 
The  houses  below  would  be  buried  almost  in- 
tact, the  sculpture  and  masonry  of  the  buildings 
overthrown  should  exist  in  fair  condition  in 
the  rubbish.  When  Nebuchadnezzar  and  Titus 
wiped  out  the  first  and  third  temple  they  could 
not  annihilate  the  stones;  and  they  were  too 
urgent  in  removing  them  to  wait  for  the 
future  builders  who  could  use  them  up.  The 
blocks  were  probably  dragged  along  and  heaved 
over  the  nearest  wall  into  a  sea  of  dust  and  chips 
below.  There  they  would  pile  up  too  deep 
for  future  quarriers,  and  the  materials  of  most  of 
those  walls  are  probably  still  lying  in  the  valleys. 
We  must  always  remember  that  the  present 
Haram  area  is  a  Herodian  production.  All  the 
south  and  east  parts  of  it  are  built  out  on  a 
system  of  arches,  like  the  great  platform  of  the 
Palatine  at  Rome.  This  arched  space,  supported 
by  high  pillars  of  masonry,  is  now  known  as 
Solomon's  stables.  The  earlier  form  of  the  hill 
is  shown  by  the  rock  as  a  long  narrow  ridge 
running  southward;  and  this  is  corroborated  by 
the  artificial  hill,  copying  the  temple  site,  which 
Oniah  erected  in  Egypt  when  the  original 
Moriah  was  entirely  desecrated  by  the  Hellenists. 
Therefore,  while  the  Haram  area  may  show  the 
outlines  of  Herod's  Temple,  it  is  the  rocky  ridge 
under  the  Dome  of  the  Rock,  and  the  slopes  of 


18  PALESTINE 

that  east  and  west  dipping  down  into  the  arched 
spaces,  which  would  yield  the  emplacement  of 
Solomon's  Temple.     It  is   a  disputed  question 
whether  the  rock  under  the  Dome  is  the  site  of 
the  Holy  of  Holies,  or  of  the  altars  of  burnt- 
offering  which  stood  in  the  court  of  the  Temple. 
It  is  hardly  profitable  in  so  short  a  sketch  to  deal 
with  more  of  the  debates  about  Jerusalem  sites. 
As    Professor    Hayter    Lewis    remarked,    when 
appealed  to  about  some  site,  "  There  is  nothing 
certain  in  Jerusalem."     Whenever  free  excava- 
tion is  possible,  we  may  begin  really  to  under- 
stand the  history  of  the  city  in  detail.     This  will 
never  be  done  if  the  problem  is  neglected,  and 
if  Jerusalem  is  now  left  to  grow  on  as  a  commer- 
cial modern  town.     The  site  is  most  unsuitable 
for  business  purposes ;  and  much  the  best  course, 
for  practical  and  for  historical  reasons,  would  be 
to  start  a  modern  suburb  and  then  clear  ancient 
Jerusalem   down   to   the  Solomonic   town,   and 
keep  it  as  the  Jewel  of  the  Past,  visited  by  all, 
but    appropriated   by   none.     The   problems   of 
modern  management  will  be  considered  further 
in  the  third  lecture. 

The  next  section  of  our  subject  is  rather  on 
influences  than  on  a  period.  The  products  and 
effects  of  the  ^gean  and  Egyptian  civilizations 
in  Palestine  are  of  the  greatest  value  historically; 
they    are    the    means    of   dating    the    different 


EGYPTIAN  CONNECTIONS  19 

periods,   and   the  proofs  of   connection  of  the 
civilizations.     The   absence  of  royal   names   in 
Palestine,  and  the  paucity  of  inscriptions,  makes 
the  help  of  Egypt  essential.     The  profusion  of 
scarabs,   beads,   and   other   small   objects;   the 
precision  with  which  these,  and   also  pottery, 
can  be  now  dated  in  Egypt;  the  facility  with 
which  they  can  be  studied  in  publications  and  in 
collections  at  home — all  these  aids  are  of  the 
greatest  help  in  dealing  with  vague  masses  of 
ruin  which  carry  nothing  of  local  dating.     No  one 
should   be   thought   competent   to   excavate  in 
Syria  who  has  not  acquired  a  thorough  know- 
ledge of  the  historical  alphabet  of  his  subject. 

It  is  natural  at  Gezer,  on  the  road  down  into 
Egypt,  much  should  be  found  from  the  south. 
A  dozen  tombs  there  (M.)  contained  duplicates 
of  things  well  known  in  Egypt,  dating  from 
the  Hyksos  age  to  the  early  Greek  time,  but 
mostly  of  the  period  of  Egyptian  occupation  in 
the  eighteenth  dynasty.  The  styles  of  pottery 
and  objects  found  associated  in  these  tomb- 
groups  are  exactly  what  we  already  know  to  be 
contemporaneous  by  our  Egyptian  material. 
The  black  pottery  with  pricked  patterns  is  asso- 
ciated with  alabaster  vases  like  those  of  the 
twelfth  to  fifteenth  dynasties,  with  a  knife  of  a 
Hyksos  form,  and  a  scarab  of  the  Hyksos  King 
Pepa.     The  pottery  known  to  be  of  the  Thothmes 


20  PALESTINE 

age  all  goes  together  with  Cretan  pottery  of  the 
same  age.  The  so-called  "  Philistine  "  tombs — 
which  have  nothing  to  do  with  those  people — 
are  exactly  in  accord  with  Egyptian  material  of 
the  seventh  century  B.C.,  and  correspond  piece 
by  piece  with  the  contents  of  a  North  Syrian 
cemetery  near  Aleppo.  If  we  were  to  give  them 
any  ethnic  name,  Scythian  would  be  as  likely 
as  any  other ;  but  these  tombs  probably  represent 
the  cosmopolitan  usage  of  all  Syria  under  the 
mixture  of  Egyptian,  Greek,  and  Assyrian  in- 
fluences. 

'We  must  beware  of  taking  objects  as  implying 
a  residence  of  the  makers.  A  cavern  tomb  at 
Gezer  has  been  called  Egyptian,  because  of  the 
source  of  the  objects;  but  as  it  is  of  the  period 
when  the  Hyksos  were  thrusting  the  Egyptians 
southward  out  of  the  Delta,  it  is  very  unhkely 
that  any  Egyptians  then  actually  penetrated 
into  Syria  against  the  northern  stream.  Objects 
from  Eg3rpt  were  naturally  prized  by  the  Hyksos, 
who  adopted  Egyptian  civilization  as  superior  to 
their  own,  and  hence  they  traded  the  scarabs, 
beads,  and  jewellery  back  into  their  own  country. 

In  the  eighteenth  dynasty  period  a  large  quan- 
tity of  pottery,  imitating  leather  work  in  its  forms 
or  decorations,  came  into  use  in  Palestine  and 
Eg3rpt.  It  is  almost  certainly  Syrian  in  origin, 
and  brought  back  into  Egypt  by  the  plundering 


ORIGIN  OF  PHILISTINES  21 

expeditions  which  were  then  so  frequent.     Wher- 
ever it  is  found  it  serves  to  mark  this  period, 
just  as  the  black  pottery  marks  the  age  of  the 
Hyksos.     Besides  these  types  there  was  a  con- 
tinual infiltration  of  certain  Mykensean  decorated 
pottery,  which  shows  the  prevalence  of  Mediter- 
ranean trades  (V.).     How  far  a  closer  connection 
may  be  due  to  a  Cretan  origin  of  the  Philistines 
is  a    matter  of  much  controversy.     In    favour 
of  that  origin  it  is  asserted  that  Cherethi  and 
Pelethi  are  Cretans  and  Philisti;  that  Caphtor, 
the  home  of  the  Philistines,  is  the  land  of  Kefti 
of  the  Egyptian  records,  which  is  assumed  to  be 
Crete,  although  the  fullest  and  most  careful  study 
of  all  the  material  indicates  Kefti  to  be  Eastern 
Cilicia;  and  a  figure  of  the  Cretan  frescoes  is 
placed  side  by  side  with  a  Kefti  man,  to  which 
there  is  no  resemblance  in  any  detail.     Certainly 
the    Caphtor- Kefti    has    nothing    to    do    with 
Crete,  though  it  may  be  linked  with  Philistines. 
Another  line  of  argument  is  that  Philistines  are 
unknown  in  the  Pentateuchal  lists  of  the  tribes 
of  Canaan,  and  therefore  came  into  the  land  some- 
time in  the  age  of  the  Judges,  which  would  agree 
to  their  being  the  Cretans  expelled  by  the  northern 
races  breaking  into  Crete,  and  ruining  the  palace  at 
the  close  of  the  Late  Minoan  II .  age.    The  feather 
head-dress  of  the  Philisti  on  Egyptian  sculptures 
is  like  that  of  a  head  on  the  Ph^estos  disc, 


22  PALESTINE 

On  the  other  hand,  it  is  warmly  asserted  that 
the  Philistines  were  Semites.  They  spoke  Semi- 
tic, as  Hebrew  and  PhiHstine  conversed  freely; 
and  their  names  are  mostly  Semitic.  They  were 
not  merely  foreign  dwellers  on  the  coast,  but 
dedicated  Saul's  armour  in  the  temple  of  the 
Semitic  goddess  Ashtoreth,  and  hung  his  body 
on  the  wall  of  Beth  Shan,  apparently  Beth 
Shean  in  the  Jordan  Valley. 

The  derivation  of  Cherethi  and  Pelethi  is  ex- 
plained away  as  meaning  "  smiters  "  and  "  pur- 
suers,'* perhaps  native  Hebrew  names  for  heavy 
and  light  troops .  The  Semitic  speech  is  explained 
away  as  an  adoption  of  the  language  of  the  new 
land  by  the  Cretan  settlers.  The  view  which 
would,  however,  combine  the  greatest  amount  of 
evidence,  would  be  to  suppose  the  Philistines 
to  be  Semites  from  Kefti  or  Cilicia,  who  de- 
scended at  the  time  of  the  attack  of  the  Amorites 
on  Rameses  III.,  down  the  Orontes  and  Libanus 
trough  into  the  head  of  the  Jordan  Valley  to 
Beth  Shean  (just  as  the  Scythians  did.  later), 
and  thence  spread  out  over  the  rich  coast-land, 
left  devastated  and  defenceless  by  the  Egyptian 
destructions.  The  Pelethi  might  thus  be  Philis- 
tines, and  the  only  point  dropped  out  would  be 
the  supposed  relation  of  Cherethi  to  Cretans. 
But  it  cannot  be  said  that  any  of  the  reasons 
^re  entirely  exclusive  or  convincing. 


SYRIAN  POTTERY  23 

A    subject    which,    by    its    complexity,    still 
needs    clearing   up   is    the   painted    pottery   of 
Syrian  origin.     There  was  certainly  an  indigen- 
ous style  of  painting  of  animals  and  patterns 
before  the  Cretan  influence ;  later  this  is  modified 
by  Crete,  it  appears  borrowed  on  Greek  vases  at 
Defeneh  and  in  Cyprus,  and  it  continues  in  much 
the  same  style  in  modern  times.     The  colouring 
is  usually  brown  on  buff.     The  most  characteris- 
tic detail  is  the  diagonal  chequers,  or  an  oblong 
divided  diagonally  into  alternate  light  and  dark 
triangles.     Such  patterns  are  entirely  unknown 
in  Egypt,  except  under  direct  foreign  use;  they 
seem  to  belong  to   Northern  Syria;  and  much 
the  same  style  appears  in  the  first  period  pottery 
of  the  necropolis  of  Susa.     Far  more  material 
is  needed,  with  accurate  dating,  before  this  large 
section  of  the  history  of  pottery  can  be   dis- 
entangled.    The  whole  subject  of  the  relations 
of  Crete,  the  ^gean,  and  Egypt,  to  the  civiliza- 
tions of  Syria  is  one  of  the  most  pressing  for 
future  research,  as  on  it  rests  the  relative  dating 
of  all  Syrian  archaeology,  and  the  tracing  of  the 
connections  of  this  group  of  countries. 

Before  the  above  period  there  are  certainly 
two  great  divisions  of  history:  (i)  The  bronze- 
using,  artistic,  high  civilization  which  was  prized 
by  the  Egyptians  on  their  conquest  of  Syria  under 
Tehutmes  III.;  and  (2)  the  earlier  neolithic  cave- 


24  PALESTINE 

dwellers  who  occupied  most  of  the  important 
sites  to  begin  with.  The  Bronze  Age  people  were 
Semites,  and  it  is  agreed  that  they  were  the 
Amurru  of  Babylonian  records  (K.  B.).  Simi- 
larly the  Amorite  is  used  in  the  Book  of  Genesis 
as  the  typical  name  of  the  native  occupier; 
'*  the  iniquity  of  the  Amorites  is  not  yet  full  '' 
(xv.  i6);  in  Judges  ''  fear  not  the  gods  of  the 
Amorites,  in  whose  land  ye  dwell  "  (vi.  lo);  in 
I  Samuel,  after  getting  the  Philistine  cities, 
'*  there  was  peace  between  Israel  and  the  Amor- 
ites "  (vii.  14).  This  use  of  the  name  Amorite 
collectively  for  the  headship  of  the  Syrians,  in- 
cluding all  the  aboriginal  and  sub-tribes  that 
they  ruled,  is  what  is  seen  also  in  Egyptian 
records,  where  only  two  great  Syrian  peoples 
are  figured  on  the  monuments,  the  Amorites 
and  the  more  northern  Hittites.  The  same  usage 
is  seen  among  us:  the  general  name  English  in- 
cludes all  the  divisions  of  the  Heptarchy,  the 
Jutes,  Saxons,  and  Danes,  as  well  as  the  earlier 
Cornish  and  Cambrian  Britons.  So  in  the  same 
manner  we  cannot  do  better  than  keep  the 
Babylonian,  Hebrew,  and  Egyptian  usage,  and 
term  the  pre-Israelite  Semites  all  together  as 
Amorites.  The  Canaanite  who  is  named  as  a 
leading  people  along  with  the  Amorite  is  a  term 
best  reserved  for  the  neolithic  troglodytes,  the 
aborigines  of  Canaan. 


AMORITE  CIVILIZATION  25 

This  great  civilization  of  the  Amorite  Age  was 
in  many  respects  at  a  higher  level  than  that  of 
Egypt.  The  Egyptians  brought  much  magnifi- 
cent spoil  from  Syria  in  the  wars  of  the  eighteenth 
dynasty,  and  they  also  brought  away  the  artists 
who  made  the  gold  and  silver  work,  in  order  to 
command  their  skill  in  Egypt.  The  record  of  the 
plunder  from  Syria  appears  to  show  an  ability 
quite  equal  to  that  of  the  Egyptians  who  took 
the  spoil.  This  civilization  was  largely  under 
Babylonian  influence,  all  the  documents  found  in 
Syria  are  in  cuneiform,  and  the  correspondence 
with  Egypt  had  to  be  conducted  in  the  same 
complex  character,  with  a  Babylonian  secretary 
at  the  Egyptian  Court  to  translate  the  corre- 
spondence and  write  the  replies.  All  this 
strongly  shows  that  the  Amorite  had  been  civi- 
lized in  Mesopotamia  before  he  trekked  round 
the  north  of  Arabia  into  Syria.  How  early  were 
these  Amurru  in  power  ?  They  appear  about 
2100  B.C.,  defeated  by  Hammurabi  and  his  son 
Samsu-iluna  (K.  B.);  and  the  name  of  the 
Amorite  Dagon  is  compounded  in  Babylonian 
names  as  early  as  2300  B.C.,  in  Idin-dagin  of 
Nisin. 

Now  the  Hyksos,  according  to  their  names, 
were  Semites;  and  they  appear  to  have  come 
down  Syria  from  upper  Mesopotamia.  Hence 
they  were  in  the  same  line  of  migration  as  the 


26  PALESTINE 

Amurru.  According  to  Egyptian  history,  they 
pushed  into  Egypt  about  2500  b.c.  Hence  it 
would  seem  that  they  were  the  front  of  that 
Semitic  migration  of  which  the  Amorite  was  the 
rear.  If  this  be  so,  then  in  the  Amorite  por- 
traits we  have  the  nearest  representation  of  the 
Hyksos,  for  not  a  single  head  of  those  people 
has  been  preserved  to  us. 

The  actual  remains  of  the  Amorite  period  do 
not  come  up  to  the  high  level  of  the  representa- 
tions of  their  works ;  and  naturally  so,  considering 
how  little  has  yet  been  excavated.  Even  in 
Egypt,  after  an  immense  amount  of  clearance, 
very  little  has  been  found  of  the  rarest  class — 
gold  or  silver  work.  Hence  we  must  not  judge 
of  the  ability  of  the  people  by  the  residue  left 
after  the  country  was  thoroughly  plundered  for 
generations. 

The  fortification  of  the  cities  is  best  shown  by 
Jericho  (E.),  where  the  wall  is  still  26  feet  high 
and  1 1 J  feet  thick,  based  on  great  blocks  a  couple 
of  yards  long  and  a  yard  high.  Other  city  walling 
is  found  at  Megiddo,  Gezer,Tell  es  Safy,  Lachish, 
and  other  sites. 

The  distinctive  differences  from  the  neolithic 
people  are  that  the  Amorites  used  bronze,  and 
also  full-length  burial  in  place  of  the  earlier 
burning  (V.).  In  the  cave  under  the  sanctuary 
of  Gezer  the  lower  or  Canaanite  burials  are  all 


AMORITE  SANCTUARIES  2^ 

burnt;  the, upper  or  Amorite  burials  are  carefully 
interred.  This  custom  of  interment  in  caves 
under  the  sanctuaries  probably  gave  rise  to 
the  idea  of  the  dead  being  called  up  b}^  enchant- 
ment out  of  the  earth,  as  in  Samuel's  appearance 
to  Saul;  and  this  was  done  by  a  woman  who 
professionally  had  a  familiar  spirit,  probably  the 
priestess  of  such  a  sanctuary. 

The  main  objects  in  a  sanctuary  were  the 
masseboth  pillars  of  unhewn  stone  (V.),  placed 
always  in  a  straight  line,  or  very  nearly  so,  never 
in  a  circle.  The  number  varies  from  three  to 
eight  ;.the  direction  of  the  line  is  north  and  south 
in  two  sanctuaries  at  Gezer,  and  one  at  Megiddo ; 
it  is  east  and  west  at  Beth  Shemesh  and  in  the 
three  stones  of  Tell  es  Safy .  Such  a  type  of  sanc- 
tuary is  known  elsewhere.  On  a  relief  from  Susa 
(Louvre)  a  holy  place  is  figured  as  having  two 
high  altars  with  steps,  a  flat  altar,  two-  rows  of 
four  cup  hollows  (like  those  in  Palestine),  two 
oblong  lavers  (like  those  at  Serabit),  and  a  row 
of  three  lopped  trunks  of  trees  and  a  stone  pillar 
all  in  a  line, parallel  to  the  lengthof  the  sanctuary, 
as  in  Palestine  (V.).  This  would  stamp  the 
masseboth  as  Amorite  rather  than  neolithic 
Canaanite.  In  the  West  such  rows  of  unhewn 
monoliths  are  frequently  found,  as  in  England 
at  Boroughbridge  (Isurium),  and  Rollright  stones. 
Some  link  with  the  East  is  not  impossible ;  the 


28  PALESTINE 

Semites  erecting  such  sanctuaries  passed  round 
the  east  of  Anatolia  about  2500  B.C.,  where  the 
Aryan  peoples  worshipping  Mithra  were  known 
rather  later.  This  Mithra  worship  certainly 
travelled  westward  to  the  Atlantic,  and  it  would 
be  possible  for  a  previous  form  of  worship  to  be 
brought  in  1,000  or  1,500  years  across  Asia  Minor 
and  Europe  by  the  Bronze  Age  migration.  We 
need  now  an  exhaustive  search  for  masseboth 
from  Syria  westwards. 

In  connection  with  the  sanctuaries  are  the 
burials  of  infants,  of  which  there  was  a  layer 
buried  in  jars  below  the  row  of  masseboth  at 
Gezer,  and  in  a  corner  of  the  sanctuary  at 
Megiddo.  The  Semitic  gods  undoubtedly  were 
connected  with  reproduction,  which  was  rightly 
looked  on  as  a  holy  function;  hence  came  the 
connection  of  reproduction  with  the  temples 
in  Babylonia,  a  custom  which  even  lingered 
among  the  Russian  pilgrims  to  the  Holy  Sepulchre 
in  modern  times.  It  was  natural,  therefore, 
that  the  first-fruits  should  be  given  to  the  god, 
as  in  Phoenicia  and  Carthage,  or  redeemed  as  by 
the  Israelites.  The  whole  system  is  eminently 
logical,  but  mistaken  as  most  logic  is  when  applied 
to  human  affairs. 

Another  branch  of  human  sacrifice  was  the 
burial  of  a  child,  or  an  adult,  under  a  foundation. 
At  Gezer  iijfants  were  found  buried  under  tjie 


FOUNDATION  SACRIFICES  29 

walls  and  under  the  thresholds;  the  skeleton  of 
an  old  woman  was  found  in  one  corner  of  a 
building;  elsewhere  the  upper  part  of  a  youth 
was  found  deposited.  At  Megiddo  there  was 
the  sacrifice  of  a  girl  at  the  foundation  corner  of 
a  large  tower  (P.  F.,  1906).  Similarly  at  the 
Labyrinth  in  Egypt,  in  a  sand-bed  on  which  a 
building  had  been  erected,  there  was  the  skeleton 
of  a  woman,  between  thirty  and  forty  years  of 
age,  the  spine  divided  in  the  middle,  and  one 
vertebra  turned  round,  and  the  skull  separated 
17  inches  from  the  body  and  turned  round. 
Under  another  corner  of  the  same  building  lay 
the  leg  and  foot  of  an  old  arthritic  man.  Again, 
under  the  corner  of  a  fort  at  Retabeh  in  the 
Wady  Tumilat  (Rameses)  was  a  brick  grave 
containing  the  body  of  a  small  child.  Such 
burial  in  a  foundation  is  well  known  in  the  West, 
as  in  the  legend  of  Merlin  and  a  curious  refer- 
ence in  the  life  of  St.  Columba.  The  later  sub- 
stitute for  the  human  sacrifice  was  the  extinction 
of  a  lighted  lamp,  which  is  found  covered  over  by 
a  bowl  beneath  doorsills  and  foundations. 

One  of  the  most  promising  prospects  in  Pales- 
tine is  the  finding  of  a  library,  or  archives,  on 
clay  tablets.  Since  the  series  of  the  cuneiform 
letters  at  Tell  Amarna,  there  have  been  great 
hopes  of  recovering  the  other  correspondence 
on   the  other  side.     Clay  tablets  will   last   for 


30  PALESTINE 

ever  if  not  crushed,  and  no  one  will  steal  them; 
hence  it  seems  certain  that  there  must  be  a  large 
amount  to  be  found  in  all  the  rich  and  flourish- 
ing cities  of  the  Amorite  Age.  So  far,  however, 
the  prizes  have  eluded  the  search;  one  letter  of 
Zimrida,  the  governor  of  Lachish,  and  a  dozen 
letters  in  a  jar  at  Ta'anak,  are  about  all  yet 
found  of  this  literary  age.  There  seems  no  reason 
why  hundreds  of  documents  of  the  greatest 
historic  interest  should  not  be  found  in  any  large 
town.  We  need  complete  clearances  on  a  wide 
,  scale,  with  well-instructed  workmen  and  large 
reward  for  objects,  to  make  sure  of  not  losing 
the  most  precious  results.  A  weakly  managed 
excavation  is  much  worse  than  leaving  the  ground 
undisturbed  for  future  exploration. 

Of  this  greatest  period  of  art  and  civilization 
in  Palestine,  never  exceeded  on  a  native  basis, 
we  need  to  recover  all  that  can  be  found.  Each 
of  the  great  city  sites  should  be  thoroughly 
cleared,  and  managed  by  directors  who  can  fully 
discriminate  the  ages  of  everything  that  they 
find,  and  can  thus  read  the  history  disclosed  as 
the  work  proceeds. 

We  go  back  now  to  the  earliest  civilization, 
that  of  the  neolithic  people,  who  are  best  termed 
Canaanites,  as  inhabiting  the  land  of  Canaan. 
Kan' ana  is  the  name  of  the  country  in  Egyptian; 


CANAANITE  WORSHIP  31 

all  other  designations — ^Amorites,  Philistines,  etc. 
— are  the  names  of  people  who  entered  the 
country,  and  "  the  land  of  "  such  tribes  has  to  be 
specified  for  their  territory.  Thus  Canaanite  is 
the  proper  designation  of  the  aborigines. 

It  appears  that  the  massehoth  sacred  pillars 
(V.)    were   of   Semitic   introduction.     The    fact 
of  a  layer  of  two  or  three  feet  of  infant  burials  in 
jars  covering  the  High  Place  of  Gezer,  beneath 
the  massehothy  proves  that  they  do  not  belong 
to  the  first  sanctuary.     At  Beth  Shemesh  the 
overthrown  pillars  were  found  in  the  Israelite 
stratum,  next  to  the  surface.     The  Canaanite 
worship  is  represented  by  the  rocks  with  groups 
of  cup  hollows,  over  or  close  to  a  burial  cave, 
such  sites  being  later  continued  as  sacred,  and 
transformed  by  the  Semitic  erection  of  masseboth. 
Usually  these  cups  are  cut  in  the  surface  of  the 
native  rock  over  a  cave,  sometimes  cut  in  blocks 
laid  over  a  burial  trench,  sometimes  they  have  a 
drain  cut  to  lead  the  drink-offering  down  into 
the  burial  cave,  sometimes  they  are  cut  upon  a 
masseboth  stone  (V.,  254).     It  seems  evident  that 
they  were  to  receive  liquid  offerings,  water,  milk, 
oil,  wine,  or  blood,  and  that  these  offerings  were 
for  the  dead  in  the  cave,  or  for  the  god  repre- 
sented by  the  stone.     This  system  of  offering 
to  the  dead  is  a  natural  type  in  a  rocky  country, 
like  the  same  system  found  in  Egypt,  where  a 


32  PALESTINE 

i)lock  of  stone  with  a  little  tank  cut  in  it,  and  a 
drain  from  that  to  the  ground,  is  the  regular 
place  for  offering  at  any  tomb  of  importance. 
Even  under  Islam  the  Egyptians  always  bury  in 
an  artificial  cave,  and  sometimes  a  small  opening 
leads  down  to  the  cave,  where  the  living  may 
come  and  talk  to  the  dead.  Cup  hollows  are  well 
known  in  Western  lands,  but  how  far  they  are 
connected  with  offerings  to  the  dead  has  not  been 
traced.  That  several  cup  hollows  should  be  cut 
close  together,  up  to  as  many  as  three  dozen 
(Tell  es  Safy),  is  quite  to  be  expected,  as  the 
members  of  one  family  would  not  wish  that  their 
offering  should  be  appropriated  by  that  of  another 
family  being  poured  over  it.  Each  family  that 
offered  would  desire  a  separate  cup,  which  could 
be  pounded  in  the  soft  limestone  without  much 
labour.  Where  cups  are  connected  by  channels 
they  probably  represent  the  families  of  de- 
pendants, the  surplus  of  the  master  passing  on 
to  his  servants'  offerings.  Thus  the  cup  hollows 
in  the  sacred  place  may  be  taken  as  the  earliest 
form  of  census  of  the  heads  of  families. 

In  the  sepulchral  cave  it  appears  that  the  burn- 
ing of  the  body  was  performed  in  place,  as  it  was 
often  reduced  to  ashes  of  bone  or  a  mere  white 
powder,  which  could  not  have  been  well  brought 
in  from  a  crematorium.  The  classical  burning 
in  the  open  air  left  bones  sufficiently  distinct 


CANAANITE  LIFE  33 

for  them  to  be  gathered  up  and  placed  in  a  jar; 
but  the  burning  in  a  cave  kept  the  heat  in,  so 
that   complete  calcination  resulted   if  the  fuel 
-sufficed. 

These    neolithic    Canaanites    made    a    rough 
pottery,  which  is  found  placed  for  food  vessels 
with  the  burials.     Simple  and  ugly  jars  with  two 
small   handles,  plain  basins,   and  cups,  do   not 
show  any  resemblance  to  Egyptian  st3des,  and 
are    probably    entirely   native    in    origin.     The 
people  were  agricultural,  and  not  merely  pastoral, 
as  is  shown  by  the  number  of  stone  grinders  for 
corn.     Cooking  was  probably  done  by  hot  stones, 
as  piles  of  pebbles,  many  burnt,  are  found  in  the 
settlements.     A    people    using    skin    and    wood 
vessels,  as  has  also  been  the  case  in  the  Jewish 
Age,  would  naturally  need  to  cook  by  hot  stones, 
an    easy    and    cleanly    method.     The    artistic 
attempts  of  this  age  were  much  on  a  level  with 
those  of  neolithic  people  in  the  West,  like   the 
Spanish  and  French  figures  associated  with  rude 
stone  monuments.     It  was  a  great  decline  from 
the  fine  carving  of  the  late  palaeolithic  cave  men. 
Thus  the  interest  of  the  Canaanite  period  is 
partly   as   a   crude   basis   for   the   later  Semitic 
Amorite  civilization,  and  partly  as  a  stratum  of 
life  very  similar  in  many  ways  to  the  Neolithic 
Age  of  the  West.     To  uncover  and  connect  this 
similar  culture  in  different  lands,  to  trace  it^ 

3 


34  PALESTINE 

lineage  with  the  eadier  and  later  works  of  man, 
and  to  ascertain  how  far  it  was  contemporary  in 
different  places,  is  one  of  the  main  tasks  of 
archaeology.  At  present  we  see  vaguely  this 
crude  style  of  life  occupying  Syria,  Anatolia, 
Northern  Greece,  and  Western  Europe,  over- 
come by  the  brilliant  Mediterranean  culture  of 
Crete  and  Egypt,  and  the  Elamite  and  Meso- 
potamian  in  the  East.  What  were  the  fluctua- 
tions of  the  great  conflict  between  barbaric 
weight  and  comfortable  decadence,  the  sack  and 
burning  of  accumulated  well-being,  the  conquests 
over  barbarous  hordes  brought  into  the  brighter 
circle  of  life,  how  the  battle  of  ages  swayed  to 
and  fro,  it  is  the  work  of  history  to  trace  out. 
In  this  research  certainly  the  neolithic  Canaanite, 
wedged  between  Egypt  and  Elam,  is  a  figure 
as  interesting  as  any  that  we  know. 

There  yet  remains  another  large  field  of  ob- 
servation in  the  geologic  history  of  man  in  Syria. 
The  successive  ages  of  cold  and  rain,  or  ice, 
alternating  with  warm  and  favourable  periods, 
and  the  changes  of  level,  are  as  marked  in  Syria 
as  in  Europe  or  Egypt.  The  high  mountain 
masses,  the  deep  valley  of  the  Jordan  and  Dead 
Sea,  give  a  favourable  region  for  preserving 
traces  of  these  changes  and  studying  them.  The 
subject  has  scarcely  been  touched  yet  in  a  com- 
prehensive manner,  and  on  such  an  excellent 


GEOLOGICAL  MAN  35 

region  for  study  much  ought  to  be  done.  So 
far  the  innumerable  caverns  of  the  limestone  of 
Palestine  have  only  yielded  burials  of  historic 
ages;  but  they  are  a  most  promising  field  for 
earlier  remains,  especially  in  connection  with  the 
physical  conditions  of  the  country. 


MESOPOTAMIA 


MESOPOTAMIA 

Mesopotamia,  like  other  fertile  valleys,  has 
always  been  the  prey  of  the  more  hardy  peoples 
around  it.  The  Turk  has  been  the  last  holder, 
the  Arab  before  him,  the  Roman,  the  Parthian, 
the  Greek,  the  Persian,  the  Assyrian,  the  Kas- 
site,  the  Semite,  and  remotely  the  Sumerian,  each 
descended  in  turn  on  the  Babylonian  plain. 
With  a  kind  of  Chinese  persistency  the  civiliza- 
tion of  that  plain  dominated  each  of  its  con- 
querors; the  art  and  the  literature  of  the 
Sumerian  was  adopted  by  all  his  early  successors, 
the  science  and  business  which  grew  up  there  is 
the  foundation  of  the  science  and  business  of  the 
whole  world  now.  Even  down  to  the  Middle 
Ages  the  most  scientific  work  on  the  balance  was 
written  by  a  Mesopotamian  archbishop.  The 
old  Sumerians  were  the  main  traders  in  Memphis 
in  the  Greek  period.  It  follows  that  when  we 
consider  Mesopotamia  we  must  take  into  account 
the  foreign  influences  which  were  poured  into 
it  on  all  sides. 

In  most  periods  it  is  the  eastern  highlands  of 
Persia  that  have  had  the  main  effect.     Before 

39 


40  MESOPOTAMIA 

the  domination  of  Islam  it  was  the  long  struggle 
of  centuries  between  Persia  and  Rome  that 
writes  the  history  of  the  great  plain  that 
parted  them — the  rich  prize  that  both  coveted. 
That  struggle  was  with  two  succei^sive  races 
ruling  in  Persia,  the  Iranian  Sassanians  for  four 
centuries  from  a.d.  226  and  the  Scythian  Par- 
thians  for  five  centuries  before  that  from  250  B.C. 
Our  view  of  the  greatness  of  Persia  and  its  splen- 
did civilization  has  been  unfortunately  clouded 
by  our  dependance  on  the  accounts  of  its 
enemies,  Rome  and  Greece.  If  we  could  have 
as  full  a  record  on  the  Persian  side,  we  should 
learn  to  feel  that  Mesopotamia  was  the  natural 
appanage  of  the  mountains  that  towered  on  its 
eastern  border ;  and  that  the  intruders  from  Italy, 
nearly  two  thousand  miles  away,  had  no  place 
on  the  Euphrates,  however  much  they  might 
claim  in  the  Mediterranean. 

Of  the  Sassanian  empire  our  estimate  must  be 
mainly  from  its  political  power  and  its  artistic 
work.  When,  in  the  third-century  collapse  of 
Rome,  Shapur  I.  entered  Antioch  and  appointed 
a  Roman,  Cyriades,  to  rule  the  Roman  border  as 
a  satrap  of  his,  he  was  doing  his  best  for  the 
country.  The  attack  by  the  Emperor  Valerian, 
who  capitulated  at  Edessa,  and  lived  a  captive 
ever  after,  did  not  mend  matters.  Persia  took 
possession  of  all  the  East,  and  even  the  Taurus  in 


SAssaNian  art  4t 

Anatolia,    though   finally   Shapur   was    worried 
back  by  the  Arabs  of  Palmyra.     Their  defensive 
service  to  the  Roman  world  was  basely  repaid 
by  Aurelian's  destruction  of  Palmyra,  and  cap- 
ture of  the  heroic  Zenobia.     The  huge  rock-cut 
monuments  (D.)  which  show  the  greatness  of 
Shapur   are  of  excellent  work,   equal   to   good 
Hellenistic  carving,  and  above  what  Rome  could 
do  in  that  age.     The  coinage  of  the  Sassanians 
is  quite  equal  to  that  of  Rome  in  the  third  cen- 
tury.    We  want  to  know  much  more  of  this  age, 
in  order  to  trace  the  effect  of  Persian  art  on  the 
West.     In  small  work  there  is  part  of  a  splendid 
cameo,  much  finer  than  anything  that  the  West 
was  then  doing.     The  clearance  of  the  palace 
ruins  of  this  age,  especially  the  search  for  the 
rubbish-heaps,   would   bring   to  light   much  to 
explain  the  later  Roman  period.     The  style  of 
the  rock-cut  monuments  is  evidently  inherited 
from  the  early  Persian  Age,  but  it  has  much 
affinity  with  the  Buddhist  sculptures  of  further 
Asia.     Which    was    the    controlling    influence, 
Persia  or  India?     Persia  continued  as  a  great 
world-power,  warring  with  India  as  well  as  the 
West,  defeating  Julian,  beating  back  the  Ephtha- 
lite  Huns,  conquering  Syria,  until  at  last,  when 
weakened  by  guarding  civilization  in  the  East, 
it  was  conquered   by   Her^clius,   and   the   fatal 
struggle  of  the  two  powers  of  civilization  left  both 


4^  MESOPOTAMIA 

of  them  a  prey  to  the  barbarous  Arabians  of 
Islam.  Dieulafoy  traces  the  whole  of  Western 
dome  and  vaulting  architecture  to  the  Persian 
building,  which  was  carried  westward  by  the 
Arab  conquerors.  However  this  may  be,  it  is 
certain  that  we  shall  never  understand  Western 
art  until  we  can  clear  up  the  filiation  of  the 
various  principles  of  construction  and  of  decora- 
tion, which  started  in  the  East.  The  great  ruins 
of  palaces  and  of  towns  remaining  in  Mesopotamia 
provide  the  best  ground  for  such  research,  as  at 
Meshetta,  Rabbath  Ammon,  or  Arak  el  Emyr. 
Only  the  standing  buildings  have  yet  been 
studied;  the  whole  soil  should  be  carefully  turned 
over,  and  everything  preserved.  Such  places 
have  the  great  advantage  of  having  been  founded 
de  novo  by  a  king,  and  deserted  soon  after,  hence 
everything  in  them  will  probably  be  dated 
within  half  a  century.  The  other  important  sites 
of  Nisibis,  Dara,  Ctesiphon,  Firuzabad,  and 
Nishapur  all  require  full  excavation. 

We  step  back  a  stage  to  the  Parthian  dominion. 
When  those  Scythian  warriors  broke  in  on  the 
feeble  Hellenism  of  the  distant  Seleucid  province 
of  Persia,  in  250  B.C., they  were  hardy  barbarians. 
They  kept  up  their  power  by  the  Turkish  system 
of  janizaries,  the  army  being  the  bondmen  of  the 
ruling  caste.  The  empire  was  on  the  basis  of  a 
federation  of  tributary  kings,  who  were  heredi- 


PARTHIAN  CIVILIZATIOM  45 

tary  rulers  of  the  different  provinces;  hence  there 
was  the  fullest  local  rule  at  all  compatible  with 
united  action.  This  great  union  reconstituted 
the  Persian  Empire  from  Anatolia  to  India. 
In  conflict  with  the  Seleucidse  the  Parthians  held 
captive  Demetrius  I.  for  ten  years;  later  they 
conquered  Antioch  and  Jerusalem ;.  and  they 
repulsed  the  Romans  under  Crassus,  Corbulo, 
Trajan,  and  Severus.  Thus  they  maintained 
almost  entire  their  domination  of  Mesopotamia. 
The  arts  of  their  adopted  country,  and  of  Greece, 
were  readily  taken  up;  it  was  the  Bacchae  of 
Euripides  that  was  being  performed  at  Court 
when  the  glorious  defeat  and  death  of  the  greedy 
Crassus  was  proclaimed.  It  was  the  subjects  of 
Greek  mythology  and  history  which  decorated 
the  palace,  amid  panels  of  silver  and  borders  of 
gold.  The  domes  were  painted  with  celestial 
scenes  of  gods  amid  the  stars.  On  the  outside 
sheet-copper  covering  glittered  in  the  sun.  This 
Persian  taste  can  be  imagined  from  the  last  relics 
of  it  brought  westward,  in  the  Spanish  domes  of 
richly  coloured  tiles.  The  Parthian  dominion 
propagated  Persian  taste,  much  as  the  Arab 
dominion  did  in  later  times.  It  is  in  the  ruined 
cities  of  this  age  that  we  must  look  for  the  blend- 
ing and  borrowing  of  Persian  and  Greek  art. 
Hatra  would  be  one  of  the  most  promising 
places,  for  its  importance  begins  with  the  Par- 


44  MESOPOTAMIA 

thian  palace;  it  lasted  down  to  the  third  century, 
but  seems  to  have  perished  with  the  Parthian 
rule,  as  it  was  deserted  by  the  middle  of  the 
fourth  century.  Hence  its  ruins  will  provide  a 
full  view  of  the  Parthian  art  unmixed  with 
earlier  or  later  work. 

The  first  great  Aryan  dominion  was  that  of 
Persia,  as  widespread  as  the  empire  of  Rome, 
from  the  heart  of  Macedonia  to  beyond  the  Indus. 
In  the  civilized  world  there  was  the  Peace  of  the 
Great  King  from  end  to  end ;  this  was  the  largest 
organization  that  the  world  had  yet  seen,  and 
it  has  hardly  ever  been  surpassed.  In  the  fields 
of  thought-^justice  and  religion — it  gave  a 
higher  ideal  than  that  of  any  previous  rule. 
There  was  the  least  possible  interference  wilji  the 
various  countries.  The  twenty  satrapies  each 
administered  their  aifairs,  very  often  by  the  old 
hereditary  ruling  families.  The  principles  of 
management  and  of  control  alone  were  the  busi- 
ness of  the  autocrat;  apd  when  that  autocrat 
was  by  consent  of  his  enemies  the  noblest  of  men, 
the  result  was  a  general  welfare  of  the  world 
which  has  perhaps  only  been  equalled  under  tjie 
Antonines.  So  lOng  as  tribute  and  an  army 
were  maintained,  no  further  interference  was 
imposed ;  and  in  such  a  vast  union  these  necessary 
burdens  would  be  far  lighter  than  the  losses  by 


THE  PERSIAN  AGE  45 

insecurity  and  war  in  any  other  >  condition. 
Like-  the  Roman  Empire  later,  the  great  means 
of  control  and  unity  was  the  road  system,  with 
its  posting-houses  and  state  couriers.  The  spread 
of  a  uniform  coinage  throughout  the  empire, 
giving  a  fixed  standard  of  exchange,  was  another 
help  to  intercourse.  The  main  profit  of  this 
great  unification  fell  naturally  to  the  Babylonian, 
as  being  the  most  advanced  people  commercially, 
and  seated  at  the  heart  of  the  empire.  The 
opening  up  of  the  sea  trade,  by  the  voyage  of 
discovery  of  Scylax  from  Babylonia^  to  India, 
was  another  means  of  advance  directly  benefiting 
Mesopotamia. 

The  civilization  which  Persia  thus  fostered 
was  worthy  of  its  position.  The  care  for  health 
was  far  advanced.  At  the  time  when  the  Greek 
reached  the  improvement  of  a  ledge  in  his  drink- 
ing-cup  to  keep  back  the  grit,  the  Persian  was 
boiling  all  the  water-supply  of  the  Court  in  silver 
cauldrons  when  on  campaign.  No  modern  sani- 
tary service  could  do  better.  In  art  also  Persia 
led  the  way.  No  Greek  had  ever  gone  beyond 
the  primitive  smirk  in  his  sculpture,  until  the 
Persian  art,  sane,  noble,  and  complete,  in  its 
feeling  and  effect,  showed  him  a  higher  road. 
The  influence  of  Persia  must  have  been  im- 
mensely spread  by  the  vast  loot  of  artistic 
objects  in  the  camp  of  Mardonius,  which  served 


46  MESOPOTAMIA 

as  models,  and  by  the  flood  of  Persian  troops 
left  behind  as  slaves  in  Greece.  On  the 
narrowest  estimate  Xerxes  brought  in  300,000 
men ;  of  these  60,000  left  with  Xerxes,  and  Arta- 
bazus  rescued  40,000  more;  but  of  the  other 
200,000  there  must  have  been  a  great  number 
who  survived,  and  became  slaves  according  to 
the  universal  rule  of  Greek  warfare.  These 
would  be  mainly  drafted  into  mechanical  arts, 
which  were  despised  by  the  free-born,  and  were 
limited  to  the  great  slave  majority  of  the 
Athenian  population.  We  see  here  the  reason 
for  the  sudden  burst  of  advance  which  Greece 
made  in  the  fifty  years  from  the  Persian  war  to 
the  Peloponnesian  war,  including  all  the  greatest 
architecture,  sculpture,  and  philosophy.  This 
was  to  Greece  what  the  sack  of  Corinth  was  to 
Roman  development. 

The  main  field  for  further  research  on  the 
Persian  monarchy  lies  in  Persia  itself;  little 
seems  to  have  been  erected  in  Babylonia.  The 
surroundings  of  Persepolis  have  never  been 
cleared;  and  from  the  burning  and  the  waste 
heaps  of  the  great  palace,  of  the  most  flourishing 
centuries  of  rule,  there  should  be  a  large  amount 
of  artistic  material  waiting  to  be  searched. 

We  now  reach  back  to  the  later  days  of  Baby- 
lon as  a  capital,  the  neo-Babylonian  period  of 
Nebuchadnezzar  and  Nabonidus.    This  was  one 


BABYLON  OF  NEBUCHADNEZZAR   47 

of  the  most  flourishing  ages  as  regards  commerce 
and  affairs;  and  in  the  last  few  years  the  palace 
and  throne  room  of  Nebuchadnezzar,  and  the 
great  walls  of  his  city,  still  remaining  forty  feet 
high  in  parts,  have  been  cleared  and  studied. 
A  striking  feature  are  the  figures  of  lions,  bulls, 
and  dragons  in  coloured  glazed  ware,  let  into  the 
face  of  the  wall,  with  bands  of  rosette  between 
them;  of  these  protective  figures,  built  up  of 
glazed  bricks,  there  were  over  five  hundred 
(K.  B.). 

The  temple,  as  in  Egypt,  seems  to  have  been 
the  house  of  the  god,  copied  from  a  human 
house.  There  is  always  a  central  open  court, 
and  usually  on  the  left  hand,  at  entering,  the 
shrine  and  its  vestibule  open  out  of  the  side  of 
the  court.  Various  store  chambers  for  temple 
property  are  placed  around  the  court.  A 
curious  feature  in  four  temple  plans  is  a  long 
narrow  corridor  running  along  the  sides.  This 
has  been  assigned  to  a  stairway,  but  there  seem 
no  traces  of  steps.  Most  probably  it  is  protec- 
tive, to  enable  guards  to  watch  the  safety  of  the 
treasure  rooms  at  night,  and  to  prevent  break- 
ing through  the  wall.  Similarly  at  Tell  Amarna 
a  long,  very  narrow,  passage  ran  in  the  thickness 
of  the  palace  outer  wall;  by  this  four  guards, 
with  a  light  at  each  corner,  could  assure  the 
safety  of  a  large  block  of  building. 


48  MESOPOTAMIA 

Of  the  great  movements  of  peoples,  the  Kim- 
merian  invasion  southward  in  650,  and  the 
Scythian  outpouring  which  followed  in  625  B.C. 
— we  need  much  more  knowledge.  Only  the 
vaguest  references  are  yet  before  us ;  and  as 
these  people  were  destructive  rather  than  con- 
structive, it  will  be  difficult  to  prove  much  more. 
Still  we  may  hope  that  some  letters  referring  to 
this  inroad  on  civilization  may  yet  be  found. 
Any  examples  of  the  artistic  work  of  the 
Scythians  would  be  very  valuable,  as  all  that 
we  know  in  Russia  is  so  mixed  with  the  Greek 
art  that  it  is  hard  to  say  what  is  local  Greek  style 
and  what  is  truly  Scythian.  To  get  Northern 
work  dated  to  the  great  invasion  in  the  seventh 
century,  before  classical  style  had  affected  it, 
would  be  valuable  for  the  history  of  the  North. 

The  mighty  power  of  Assyria,  ruthless  and 
scientific  in  its  cruel  rule,  and  hated  by  all  the 
world,  is  already  better  known  to  us  than  any 
other  pre-classical  age.  The  great  discoveries 
in  the  middle  of  the  last  century  gave  not  only 
a  popular  idea  of  Assyria,  but  unfortunately 
fixed  the  name  Assyriology  on  the  whole  study 
of  Mesopotamian  writing ;  while  we  now  look  on 
Assyria  as  the  parvenu  on  the  old  business  and 
science  of  the  great  plain.  There  is  less  call 
for  research  in  the  Assyrian  period  and  land  than 
there  is  in  the  other  civilizations. 


THE  HITTITES  49 

Looking  farther  back,  the  next  large  influence 
was  that  of  the  Hittites.  Much  has  been  gleaned 
about  them  from  Egyptian  and  Babylonian 
sources,  during  a  generation  past.  The  latest 
and  most  important  source  is  the  great  mass  of 
many  thousands  of  cuneiform  tablets  found  by 
German  work  at  the  Hittite  capital,  Boghaz 
Keui.  The  question  now  most  debated  is 
whether  various  resemblances  of  Hittite  words 
and'  grammar  to  the  Western  Aryan  languages 
may  show  that  Hittite  is  really  akin  to  European 
speech  (J.  E.,  191 7,  190).  The  names  and  some 
other  words  are  distinctly  non-European,  and  the 
physiognomy  is  classed  as  Mongolian.  Yet  we 
now  know  tl\at  various  East  Aryan  gods,  as 
Mithra,  Indra,  and  Varuna,  were  being  wor- 
shipped on  the  Hittite  frontier  in  Mitanni.  The 
more  generally  accepted  position  seems  to  be 
that  the  Hittite  language  had  been  modified  and 
mixed  with  an  Aryan  tongue.  Whenever  it  may 
be  possible  to  work  out  the  great  mass  of  tablets, 
now  in  Constantinople,  the  position  will  be  clearer. 

The  source  of  the  Hittites  is  not  yet  settled. 
While  undoubtedly  pushing  southward.  Eastern 
Anatolia  has  been  suggested  as  their  home. 
Yet  the  most  definite  evidence  is  the  list  of 
cities  by  whose  gods  they  swear  to  the  treaty 
with  Egypt.  These  places  are  in  Armenia, 
along  the  head  waters  of  the  Euphrates  almost 

4 


so  MESOPOTAMIA 

to  its  source — a  region  which  would  agree  with 
all  other  indications,  such  as  their  coming 
from  a  cold  climate  and  a  rough  country.  As 
early  as  1920  B.C.  they  made  a  push  down  the 
Euphrates  into  Babylonia.  Their  later  fields  were 
down  Syria  into  contact  with  the  Egyptians, 
and  westward  into  Anatolia.  This  spread  shows 
that  we.  may  recover  their  history  in  various 
directions.  The  excavations  at  CarchemisK 
(H.  C.)  have  only  touched  a  fiftieth  of  the  area, 
and  that  only  in  the  top  stratum;  but  they  have 
brought  to  light  a  couple  of  dozen  slabs  of  sculp- 
ture, showing  many  details  of  that  Hittite 
civilization,  and  a  dozen  long  inscriptions.  This 
is  but  a  beginning,  and  it  should  be  actively 
continued,  for  much  had  been  broken  up  and 
destroyed  in  the  last  thirty  years,  since  the 
trivial  holes  dug  in  1880. 

The  Hittite  sites,  being  mostly  in  the  hill 
countries,  are  mainly  built  with  stone;  they  will 
therefore  need  strict  conservation  to  prevent 
their  being  all  destroyed  for  modern  building 
material.  The  search  for  the  earlier  settlements 
in  Armenia  should  be  thoroughly  carried  out 
before  that  country  may  be  exploited;  owing 
to  its  mountainous  and  difficult  nature  there  is 
a  good  prospect  of  recovering  the  primitive 
Hittite  style  there,  before  it  became  so  largely 
influenced  by  Assyria  and  other  lands. 


HISTORY  OF  THE  HITTITES        51 

The   cemeteries    of   the    Hittite   region   have 
been  greatly  wrecked  by  the  natives,  after  they 
were  exposed  in  cutting  the  Baghdad  Railway. 
Strict  conservation,  therefore,  is  an  immediate 
question.     The    general    results,   just    north    of 
Aleppo,  so  far  show  that  before  the  Persian  period 
there  was  an  Iron  Age  from  iioo  to  600  B.C.; 
a  Middle  Hittite  Bronze  Age  back  to  1750  B.C., 
and  an  Early  Hittite  Bronze  or  Copper  Age  before 
that,  with  Sumerian  cylinders  (L.  A.,  VI.,  87). 
The  still   earlier   Copper   Age   tombs  are  char- 
acterized by  pottery  incense  burners  like  those 
of  the  sixth  to  twelfth  dynasty  in  Egypt,  with 
which  they  are  probably  conteriiporary.     Globu- 
lar vases  also  belong  to  that  age,  and  to  the 
twelfth  dynasty  in  Egypt.     These  resemblances 
suggest  that  the  foreigners  who  broke  up  the 
Old  Kingdom  of  Egypt  were  from  the  northern 
Euphrates,  in  accordance  with  the  indications 
of   the   button   patterns,   alike   in  Aleppo   and 
Bismiya  as  in   Egypt.     There  is,  however,  no 
proof  that  the  Hittite  tribes  were  in  the  upper 
Euphrates   Valley   in   so   early   a   period.     The 
whole  of  the  cemeteries  of  this  region  need  careful 
and  thorough  research,  with  full  publication  of 
the  types,  registers  of  all  contents  of  the  tombs, 
and  plates  of  the  most  complete  tomb  groups 
entire. 

Contemporary  with  the  earlier  Hittite  period 


52  MESOPOTAMIA 

was  the  Kassite  dominion  in  Babylon.  This  was 
the  first  appearance  of  an  Aryan  people  as  rulers, 
and  therefore  is  of  great  interest  historically, 
and  as  the  forerunner  of  the  European  domina- 
tion. They  were  probably  akin  to  the  Mitanni 
people,  who  stretched  across  the  north  of  the 
plain  from  river  to  river,  above  Aleppo.  They 
appear  as  a  simple  people,  of  ruling  capacity,  who 
adopted  readily  the  Babylonian  civilization. 
They  showed  ability  as  successful  rulers,  and  were 
adapters  rather  than  originators.  They  arrived 
from  a  rather  long  migration,  as  they  brought 
in  the  common  use  of  the  horse ;  had  that  animal 
been  anywhere  near  Babylonia  before,  it  would 
have  arrived  in  the  active  mercantile  business 
of  the  previous  civilizations,  instead  of  being 
known  only  as  a  great  rarity.  From  their  move- 
ment southward  with  the  horse,  about  1800  B.C., 
that  animal  reached  Egypt  a  century  or  two 
later. 

Historically  our  main  knowledge  of  these 
people  is  by  their  long  correspondence  with 
the  Egyptian  kings  about  1400  B.C.  The  mass 
of  letters  found  at  Tell  Amarna  in  Upper 
Egypt  has  provided  material  for  discussion  for 
a  generation  past;  it  has  given  a  clear  view  of 
the  relations  of  kingdoms,  of  the  commerce  in 
progress,  and  of  the  activities  of  the  different 
countries.     It  shows  how  the  Euphrates  region 


KASSITES  AND  PARTHIANS         53 

was  under  extensive  rule  from  Babylon,  along 
with  kings  of  the  Hittites,  of  Mitanni,  of  Assyria, 
and  of  Alashiya  or  the  Orontes  Valley,  occupying 
the  upper  region  of  the  rivers.  In  contrast  to 
this,  Syria  was  divided  in  a  multitude  of  petty 
city  states,  without  cohesion  or  power  to  resist 
the  successive  inroads  of  greater  rulers  on  dif- 
ferent sides.  This  difference  may  be  due  to  the 
geographical  condition  of  a  broken  and  mountain- 
ous country  in  contrast  to  the  great  homo- 
geneous plains  of  the  Nile  and  the  Euphrates. 
In  later  times  the  Seleucid  Empire  was  by  no 
means  solid,  for  Syria  was  continually  being 
seized  from  Antioch  or  from  Memphis,  according 
to  whichever  ruler  was  the  more  able.  There  is 
a  strong  historical  parallel  between  the  Kassite 
and  the  later  Parthian  power.  Both  spoke  the 
Aryan  tongue;  both  worshipped  Mithra  and  the 
sacred  fire;  both  owed  their  power  to  the  bow 
and  to  national  horsemanship;  neither  race  had 
any  marked  culture  of  their  own,  but  readily 
adopted  the  Babylonian  civilization;  and  both 
were  distinguished  by  success  in  strong  and  able 
rule,  which  was  readily  accepted  by  their  sub- 
jects. As,  moreover,  the  interval  between  them 
is  1,500  years,  they  are  in  similar  parts  of  succes- 
sive cycles  of  civilization,  like  the  two  Semitic 
conquests  of  Africa  and  Spain  by  the  Phoenicians 
and  the  Arabs,    We  need  JiQW  extensive  wQrJcing 


54  MESOPOTAMIA 

in  cities  of  this  period,  not  only  of  Babylonia,  but 
of  the  more  northern  region,  where  we  may 
expect  to  find  tablets  of  correspondence  between 
states,  similar  to  the  set  found  at  Tell  Amarna. 
Perhaps  it  may  be  thought  that  such  tablets 
may  be  trusted  to  turn  up  if  found  by  natives. 
But  what  was  the  history  of  the  Amarna  corre- 
spondence ?  Found  by  accident,  some  of  it 
was  bought  by  a  dealer;  he  could  not  sell  the 
tablets,  they  were  sneered  at  as  forgeries;  at 
last  the  group  was  tumbled  into  a  sack  and 
jolted  on  donkey-back  up  to  Thebes,  with  great 
loss.  It  was  two  or  three  years  before  they 
reached  the  hands  of  those  who  could  appreciate 
what  survived.  This  sort  of  martyrdom  of 
history  should  be  forestalled  by  active  inspec- 
tion, good  payment  to  attract  discoveries,  and 
careful  excavation.  Could  we  build  up  a  clear 
view  of  the  condition  of  the  East,  in  the  ages 
which  laid  the  foundation  of  the  early  Classical 
period,  we  should  understand  the  meaning  of 
the  turmoil  of  the  Hellenic  world  far  better. 

Looking  farther  back,  we  find  firm  historical 
ground  in  the  grand  age  of  Hammurabi  of  Baby- 
lon, 2123  to  2081  B.C.,  and  Gudea  of  Lagash, 
about  2450  B.C.  (K.  B.).  Here  we  are  lighted  by 
three  different  sources — the  art,  the  correspond- 
ence, and  the  laws.  From  these  we  can  realize 
a  great  deal  of  how  life  went  on,  and  the  con- 


HAMMURABI'S  RULE  55 

ditions  of  mankind.  The  style  of  the  sculpture 
is  by  no  means  primitive.  On  the  contrary,  it  is 
conventional,  settled  in  its  character,  not  re- 
joicing in  pomp  like  the  Assyrian,  or  of  individual 
vigour  like  the  Sumerian.  It  fits  the  age  as 
that  of  a  civilization  which  was  fully  grown  in 
material  prosperity,  having  outlived  the  fer- 
ment of  ideals.  The  correspondence  of  Ham- 
murabi shows  us  the  king  as  supreme  referee; 
any  official  difficulty  was  referred  to  him,  any 
defeated  litigant  could  appeal  to  him,  in  person 
if  near,  or  to  royal  deputies  if  at  a  distance. 
The  supervisitm  of  the  details  of  a  great  kingdom 
to  such  an  extent  seems  almost  incredible,  as 
much  so  as  Trajan's  letters  to  Pliny,  from  which 
it  appears  that  nothing  could  be  done  to  a  sewer 
or  a  cemetery  in  all  the  Roman  Empire  without 
the  personal  reply  of  the  Emperor.  To  us  this 
intense  centralization  is  difficult  to  realize,  we 
should  feel  it  an  intolerable  bondage;  but  to  a 
people  who  did  not  originate  much,  the  personal 
direction  saved  their  decision  and  ensured  har- 
monious working.  Hammurabi  was  mainly  en- 
gaged in  keeping  his  bureaucracy  in  order. 
Every  case  of  bribery  which  reached  his  notice 
seems  to  have  been  rigorously  investigated; 
such  is  the  first  duty  of  a  ruler  in  most  countries, 
both  East  and  West,  a  duty  which  we  have  much 
neglected,     In  Egypt  at  the  present  time   the 


56  MESOPOTAMIA 

extent  of  incessant  fraud  by  bribery  is  incredible 
till  experienced.  Another  royal  care  was  that  of 
Food  Director,  equalizing  supplies  in  case  of 
local  deficiency,  a  function  of  which  we  know  the 
necessity  in  India.  In  another  direction  the 
king  had  a  function  which  elsewhere  is  usually 
priestly — the  regulation  of  the  calendar.  The 
astronomers,  who  were  employed  to  observe  the 
new  moon  in  order  to  fix  the  month,  reported 
directly  to  the  king;  and  it  was  the  decision 
of  the  king  which  settled  the  intercalation  of  an 
additional  month  to  preserve  the  relation  of  the 
months  to  the  seasons.  This  device  of  an  addi- 
tional month,  by  people  who  use  a  natural  lunar 
month,  is  familiar  to  us  in  modern  usage  in  the 
Muhammadan  Calendar. 

The  great  glory  of  Hammurabi  is  his  codifica- 
tion of  laws,  which  has  come  down  to  us  nearly 
entire,  upon  his  monument  that  was  afterwards 
carried  away  to  Susa,  where  De  Morgan  found  it 
in  fragments.  So  much  has  been  written  upon  this 
code,  that  I  will  rather  notice  some  less  familiar 
aspects  of  it.  Like  other  codes,  the  range  and 
detail  of  the  laws  give  a  precise  view  of  the  society 
of  the  age.  The  relative  importance  of  different 
interests  is  shown  by  the  number  of  laws  con- 
cerning each.  Broadly  speaking,  there  is  about 
equal  attention  to  the  four  subjects  of  Agricul- 
ture, Trade,  Women  and  the  family,  and  Personal 


LAWS  OF  HAMMURABI  57 

condition,  while  less  than  half  of  such  importance 
is  given  to  the  law  of  Official  position,  and  also 
to  general  property.  The  distinctive  tone  is 
that  of  town  life,  and  of  the  country  as  contribu- 
tory to  that.  If  we  compare  for  a  moment 
tribal  law  as  in  the  Welsh  codes,  either  the 
earlier  of  Moelmud  or  the  later  of  Howel,  it  is 
the  country  life  that  pervades  the  whole  of  those, 
and  town  life  is  absent.  If  otherwise  we  com- 
pare the  Babylonian  with  Roman  law,  it  is 
entirely  concrete  and  pragmatic,  and  knows 
nothing  of  the  lengthy  principles  of  status  which 
were  elaborated  in  the  West.  If  in  another  direc- 
tion we  compare  Indian  law  as  of  Ndrada — town 
life  in  that. is  prominent,  andrthere  is  less  atten- 
tion to  agriculture,  but  on  the  whole  the  relative 
attention  to  different  subjects  is  much  the  same 
as  in  Babylon.  What  marks  out  the  Indian 
law  is  that  procedures  and  principles  occupy  as 
much  space  as  the  lav^s :  whereas  in  Babylonia 
they  are  ignored,  and  it  is  assumed  that  the  judge 
settles  such  matters.  The  general  similarity  of 
subjects  makes  it  the  more  instructive  to  look 
at  the  contrasts  of  Indian  and  Babylonian  law. 
In  India  *'  women's  business  transactions  are 
null  and  void  .  .  .  women  are  not  entitled  to 
make  a  gift  or  sale  *'  of  real  property.  '^  Three 
persons,  a  wife,  a  slave,  a  son,  have  no  property'; 
whatever  they   acquire  belongs  to   him  whose 


58  MESOPOTAMIA 

they  are."  In  Babylon  any  property  given  to  a 
wife  was  at  her  entire  disposal  within  her  family ; 
and  if  a  woman  took  a  vow  of  a  single  life,  she 
had  entire  disposal  of  any  property  which  was 
given  her  on  those  terms,  and  of  the  property 
which  she  might  accumulate  by  trade.  In  India 
marriages  of  relations  were  prohibited  to  the 
seventh  degree  of  the  father's  side,  the  fifth 
degree  of  the  mother's.  In  Babylonia  there  were 
no  prohibitions  beyond  the  direct  descent,  and 
the  step-mother  or  daughter-in-law.  Thus,  both 
in  women's  property  and  in  marriage  Babylonia 
was  much  nearer  to  Egypt  than  to  India.  On 
the  other  hand,  adoption,  which  was  so  important 
in  Roman  law,  was  also  prominent  in  Babylonia, 
and  yet  seems  unknown  in  Egypt.  It  can  hardly 
be  attributed,  therefore,  to  the  importance  of 
ancestral  offerings,  as  such  were  more  important 
in  Egypt  than  in  Rome.  The  wide  field  of  com- 
parative law  has  gained  much  from  this  exten- 
sive code  of  nearly  250  laws,  placed  in  classified 
order.  Yet  this  must  not  be  taken  as  a  com- 
position of  the  lawgiver,  any  more  than  the 
codes  of  Theodosius  or  Justinian  or  Napoleon. 
The  earlier  Sumerian  laws  were  also  codified, 
and  the  work  of  Hammurabi  was  rather  the  com- 
bination and  reconciliation  of  Sumerian  and 
Semitic  law.  The  former  was  the  law  of  com- 
merce and  agriculture;  the  latter  was  the  law 


ANCIENT  PRICES  59 

of  theft,  slavery,  violence,  and  pastoral  life,  as  is 
shown  by  the  resemblances  in  these  subjects 
to  Hebrew  law.  Thus,  even  apart  from  the  evi- 
dence of  the  earlier  tablets  of  Sumerian  laws,  it 
would  be  possible  to  separate  the  two  sources  of 
the  code  with  good  reason. 

At  the  latter  part  of  the  code  there  are  fifteen 
laws  anticipating  the  great  edict  of  prices  by 
Diocletian.  The  rates  of  hire  of  animals  and 
carts,  and  rates  of  labourers'  and  artisans'  pay, 
are  all  fixed,  but  there  is  no  interference  with 
prices  of  goods.  The  unexpected  valuation  is 
that  an  agricultural  labourer  was  paid  more  than 
an  artisan  or  a  boatman.  The  hire  of  two  cows 
was  equal  to  that  of  a  boatman,  or  of  two  plough 
oxen  equal  to  that  of  a  field-hand.  The  great 
scarcity  of  metals  is  surprising:  a  day's  wages 
was  only  from  3  to  5  grains  weight  of  silver, 
which  was  thus  more  than  a  hundred  times  its 
present  value.  Such  was,  however,  the  mediaeval 
wage  in  England.  The  limitation  of  wages  sug- 
gests that,  like  our  statute  of  labourers,  it  was 
ordained  to  meet  a  rise  in  wage,  due  to  increased 
supply  of  metals  and  greater  welfare.  Such  a 
change  was  probably  the  result  of  the  security 
and  prosperity  of  the  good  administration  of 
Hammurabi;  as,  similarly,  wages  have  doubled 
in  Egypt  in  our  generation,  by  the  benefits  of  the 
British  occupation, 


6o  MESOPOTAMIA 

While  the  Semites  were  fully  open  to  adopting 
all  the  older  civilization  of  the  Sumerians  whom 
they  had  conquered,  and  carried  on  the  business 
and  the  literature  into  their  own  system  of 
things,  yet  there  was  throughout  the  land  the 
token  of  their  supremacy,  in  the  hereditary 
feodaries,  who  held  estates  on  conditions  of  serv- 
ing the  king  when  called  on  in  peace  or  in  war. 
They  were  originally  soldiers,  planted  over  the 
land  to  keep  it  in  order ;  and  they  doubtless,  like 
all  such  occupiers,  gradually  mixed  with  the 
earlier  population,  and  transformed  their  control 
from  being  an  alien  to  being  a  class  rule.  This 
did  not  at  all  imply  that  the  Sumerians  were  "  a 
dying  race,''  as  has  been  said.  They  were  far 
too  tough  for  that;  the  civilization  was  theirs, 
^he  business  habits  were  theirs,  and  they  per- 
sisted just  as  the  Egyptian  has  persisted,  in 
spite  of  the  Semitic  conquest  and  mixture  of 
the  Arab.  The  proof  of  this  is  that  in  the  fifth 
century  b.c.  the  most  usual  type  among  the 
foreign  traders  in  Memphis  was  the  Sumerian, 
exactly  as  he  appeared  three  thousand  years 
before  on  his  own  monuments.  I  am  told  that 
the  type  is  still  prominent  in  Babylonia. 

The  worst  blow  that  the  Sumerian  ever  had 
was  the  Hittite  invasion  in  1926  b.c.  which  broke 
up  the  dynasty  of  Hammurabi.  This  produced  a 
cjestruction  somewjiat  like  the  Mongol  storms  pf 


'  THE  SUMERIAN  AGE  6i 

later  ages,  and  many  of  the  old  city-states — 
the  homes  of  Sumerian  culture — were  devastated 
and  never  reoccupied.  This  is  parallel  to  the 
ruin  of  some  Etruscan  cities  by  the  Gothic 
and  Lombard  invasions,  although  they  had 
lasted  through  the  age  of  the  Romans  who  ab- 
sorbed their  civilization;  or  like  the  Greek  cities 
afterwards  Roman,  which  were  desolated  by  the 
Saracens.  Such  sites  are  by  far  the  most  promis- 
ing for  excavations. 

It  was,  however,  the  Semitized  type  of 
Sumerian  civilization  that  survived,  and  rose 
again  into  prominence  under  the  Kassite  rulers. 
Hammurabi's  dynasty  had  made  its  mark  per- 
manently in  establishing  Babylon  as  the  capital, 
and  henceforward  Babylon,  or  its  local  succes- 
sors, Ctesiphon,  Seleucia,  and  Baghdad,  have 
been  the  capitals  of  the  Tigris  and  Euphrates. 

In  looking  back  a  further  stage,  we  pass  be- 
yond all  that  was  even  slightly  known  in  Classi- 
cal and  Biblical  history.  We  have  to  trust  to 
piecing  together  the  single  morsels  of  one  genera- 
tion or  another,  when  we  deal  with  the  Sumerian 
history. 

Some  three  centuries  before  the  age  of  Ham- 
murabi we  meet  another  considerable  figure — 
that  of  Gudea,  the  Sumerian  prince  of  Lagash  or 
Tell  Lo,  whose  works  came  to  light  in  the  ex- 
cavations of  De  Sarzec.    This  reign  not  only 


62  MESOPOTAMIA 

claims  notice  by  the  life-size  statues  of  black 
diorite,  now  in  Paris,  but  still  more  because 
Gudea  was  an  originator  who  gave  much  atten- 
tion to  artistic  works.  He  collected  materials 
from  the  Syrian  mountains  and  from  Elam;  he 
claimed  a  divine  vision  showing  him  the  plan 
of  his  temple,  which  he  describes;  his  seated 
figures  have  on  the  knees  of  one  a  drawing- 
board  with  a  plan  of  a  building,  on  another  a 
board  with  a  divided  cubit  feather-edge  scale, 
and  a  graver;  he  further  made  special  bricks 
ceremonially;  and  he  claims  to  have  started  new 
features  in  building  that  were  unknown  before. 
All  of  this  is  the  aspect  of  a  rising  art,  extending 
its  resources  of  material  and  of  style.  No  other 
royal  architect  in  any  age  seems  to  have  taken 
so  personal  a  part  in  architectural  affairs.  He 
was  influenced  by  the  Semitic  theism,  and  ex- 
pelled the  sorcerers  who  belonged  to  the  older 
Sumerian  animism.  His  rule  was  firm  and  pros- 
perous. If  we  were  to  excavate  not  only  the 
temple  but  the  city  of  his  period,  a  rich  reward 
of  artistic  work  of  his  age  might  probably  be 
obtained.  Near  this  period  is  another  Sumerian 
prince,  Dungi  of  Ur.  He  specially  favoured 
the  city  of  Eridu,  in  which  was  one  of  the  oldest 
shrines  of  the  Sumerians,  and  this  earlier  popu- 
lation seems  to  have  risen  into  predominance 
over  the  Semite.     He  does  not  show  the  same 


ARBITRARY  DATING  63 

artistic  zeal  as  Gudea,  but  he  asserted  Sumerian 
supremacy  by  extending  his  power  from  the 
shore  on  the  Arabian  side,  up  the  Euphrates  to 
Babylon,  and  a^cross  the  Tigris  to  Susa  and  Elam. 
As  a  political  figure  he  is  of  the  first  rank;  and 
the  finely  engraved  cylinders  and  exquisitely 
written  tablets  of  his  records  show  the  high 
condition  of  work  at  that  time.  He  unified 
the  weights  and  established  standards  in  the 
country,  which  were  respectfully  copied  down  to 
the  time  of  Nebuchadnezzar.  This  last  flower- 
ing of  independent  Sumerian  culture  demands 
much  fuller  examination.  The  city  sites  should 
be  thoroughly  searched,  not  merely  tunnelled 
and  scraped  over  for  tablets,  but  thoroughly 
cleared  in  a  systematic  way,  for  the  recovery 
of  all  the  objects  of  daily  life  and  the  revealing 
of  the  whole  civilization. 

Before  we  look  back  to  still  earlier  ages  we 
must  notice  the  general  question  of  the  distance 
of  time.  Within  the  last  generation  a  school  has 
risen  in  Germany  which  claims  to  set  aside  the 
most  positive  statements  of  ancient  records  in 
favour  of  its  internal  consciousness.  As  the  most 
prominent  exponent  said  to  me,  "  I  cannot  be- 
lieve the  time  was  so  long."  That  is  sufficient 
for  these  theorists  and  their  followers,  to  rewrite 
ancient  history  by  their  sense  of  probability,  no 
matter  what  the  documents  may  say.     From  the 


64  MESOPOTAMIA 

recorded  age  of  Egypt  over  two  thousand  years 
is  deducted,  from  that  of  Babylonia  nearly  as 
much.  It  is  all  reduced  to  a  question  of  modern 
belief  and  not  of  ancient  evidence.  An  interest- 
ing test  has  lately  come  to  light.  The  historian 
Berosos,  writing  in  the  third  century  B.C.,  with 
all  the  remains  of  Babylonian  history  before  him, 
had  placed  the  first  dynasty  of  Babylon  as  be- 
ginning in  2232  B.C.  This  is  how  he  was  treated : 
"  It  is  safer  to  treat  the  date  2232  b.c.  as  without 
significance."  "  The  recent  reduction  in  the 
date  of  the  first  dynasty  of  Babylon  is  necessi- 
tated by  the  proof  "  that  those  dynasties  were 
partly  contemporary.  "  The  date  of  Ham- 
murabi has  been  fixed  to  somewhere  between 
1950  and  1900  B.C.  (to  the  confusion  of 
Nabonidus'  Babylonian  scribe)  or  2050  B.C.  for 
the  beginning  of  the  first  dynasty  of  Babylon." 
All  of  this  very  peremptory  and  dogmatic  state- 
ment was  immediately  contradicted,  by  the 
astronomical  reckoning  from  tablets  recording 
the  positions  of  the  planet  Venus  in  the  month 
and  year  (K.  B.).  These  tablets  proved  a  fixed 
date  in  1977  B.C.,  from  which  the  start  of  the 
Babylonian  dynasties  would  be  in  2225  or  2229 
B.C.,  or  only  seven  years,  or  less,  different  from 
the  record  of  Berosos.  All  the  positive  assertion 
of  superior  knowledge  has  vanished,  and  the 
record  is  proved  correct. 


MONUMENTAL  DATES  65 

This  flagrant  example  of  destroyed  dogmatism 
renders  us  suspicious  of  the  following  dogma. 
The  record  of  Nabonidus  states  that  the  great 
king   Naram-Sin,  whom  we  shall   next   notice, 
lived  3,200  years  before,  or  in  3750  b.c.     In  spite 
of  this  clear  statement,  we  are  assured  that  this 
date  "  has  no  authority  whatever  to  support  it." 
The  German  lops  off  a  thousand  years  at  his 
fancy,  and  assures  us  the  scribe  has  made  an 
error.     What  is  there  to  set  against  the  ancient 
statement  ?     We  are  told  that  "  palseographic 
evidence  makes  it  impossible."     This  vaguest  of 
criteria,  the  rate  of  change  of  style,  is  supposed 
to  be  worth  more  than  any  clear  statements  of 
ancient   documents.     How   many  years  elapsed 
between  the  fifth  and  the  twenty-sixth  dynasty 
sculptures    in     Egypt  ?    between    the    second- 
century    and    sixteenth-century   inscriptions    in 
Italy  ?  between  the  Roman  monuments  on  the 
Mainz  and  Albert  Durer  ?     On  palseographic  or 
artistic  grounds  probably  not  a  couple  of  cen- 
turies could  be  allowed  in  any  of  these  instances, 
yet  we  know  that  the  interval  was  really  over  a 
thousand  years  in  all  these  cases.     There  is  no 
greater  fallacy  than  imagining  probable  intervals 
of  time  from  artistic  resemblances.     A  positive 
statement  must  be  accepted,  until  some  more 
precise  and  cogent  fact  may  supersede  it.     There- 
fore,  until  better  information  is   obtained,  we 

5 


66  MESOPOTAMIA 

accept  what  the  Babylonians  believed,  as  the 
least  improbable  statement,  and  take  Naram- 
Sin  as  reigning  3750  B.C. 

This  clears  away  what  would  otherwise  be  a 
great    difficulty.     If  the   date    2750   B.C.    were 
adopted,  and  2100  for  Hammurabi,  with  Gudea 
between,  it  would  imply  a  continuity  of  high 
art  for  650  years.     Such  a  continuity  is — I  be- 
lieve— unknown  in  any  country;  every  land  has 
seen  the  rise  and  the  fall  of  art  in  such  a  space 
of  time.     When  the  ancient  reckoning  of  3750 
B.C.  is  accepted  the  interval  to  Gudea  is  1,300, 
to  Hammurabi   1,600   years,  and    such  is  about 
the  usual  interval  between  successive  civiliza- 
tions. 

The  age  of  Sargon  and  Naram-Sin  stands  in 
relation  to  later  Babylonian  history  much  as  the 
age  of  Pericles  is  to  European  history.  It  was 
the  time  of  supreme  art,  and  of  founding  the 
standards  of  subsequent  thought  and  action 
(K.  S.).  It  is  to  us,  therefore,  the  most  interest- 
ing and  important  age  of  the  whole  Eastern 
world.  That  the  position  of  Sargon  was  of  the 
highest  importance  is  stated  in  the  Chronicle 
of  the  Kings:  "  Sargon  of  Agad6,  through  the 
royal  gift  of  Ishtar,  was  exalted,  and  he  had  no 
foe  nor  rival.  His  glory  over  the  world  he 
poured  out  .  .  .  and  over  the  hosts  of  the  world 
he  reigned  supreme.''     Though  his  old  age  was 


ART  OF  NARAM-SIN  67 

troubled  by  rebellion,  his  son  Naram-Sin  fully 
re-established  the  dominion.  The  events  of 
Sargon's  life  were  accepted  as  the  types  of  cause 
and  effect,  and  formed  the  basis  of  the  system  of 
omens  down  to  the  end  of  Babylonian  history. 

The  triumphal  monument  of  Naram-Sin 
(D.  M.)  is  the  earliest  example  of  the  full  freedom 
of  art  and  expression  in  Asia.  No  later  monu- 
ment of  Babylon  or  Assyria  so  nearly  agrees 
with  the  Western  style  of  sculpture  and  ideal 
of  action.  The  vigour,  the  spirit  of  motion, 
the  open-air  feeling,  the  composition  symbolizing 
the  ascent  of  a  wooded  mountainous  region  with- 
out losing  any  reality — all  this  places  the  art 
of  Naram-Sin  among  the  great  examples  of  human 
expression. 

Fragments  of  other  scenes  of  this  age  are  of  the 
same  character.  This  great  advance  must  be 
attributed  to  the  fusion  of  the  Semite  and 
Sumerian*  races,  for  it  is  always  a  race-fusion 
that  results  in  an  advance  of  art  and  other 
forms  of  civilization.  On  the  scene  of  triumph 
Naram-Sin  is  a  bearded  Semite,  while  most  of 
his  warriors  are  shaven  Sumerians.  The  same 
contrast  is  seen  on  the  scene  of  triumph  of  Nar- 
mer  in  Egypt,  at  the  rise  of  Egyptian  art;  the 
king  and  his  servant  are  shaven,  and  the  war- 
riors are  all  bearded.  The  scene  of  Naram-Sin 
had  been  removed  to  Susa,  but  lesser  pieces  of 


68  MESOPOTAMIA 

'sculpture  were  found  at  Tell  Lo.  It  is  to  the 
early  Babylonian  cities,  and  specially  to  Agad^, 
the  capital  of  Sargon,  somewhere  west  of 
Baghdad,  that  we  must  look  for  more  remains 
of  this  grand  age.  There  is  no  research  more 
promising  and  more  desirable  than  the  recovery 
of  the  finest  period  of  Asiatic  art,  by  the  side  of 
which  the  sculptures  of  Assyria  seem  merely 
clumsy  and  bombastic.  Our  search  may  spread 
wide,  for  Naram-Sin  has  left  sculptures  as  far 
north  as  Diarbekir  in  Armenia ,  east  of  Cappadocia , 
though  perhaps  his  best  artists  were  not  sent  to 
such  distances;  also  Sargon  may  have  left  his 
work  far  to  the  west,  as  he  conquered  kings  of 
the  Amorites  or  Northern  Syria,  and  set  up 
monuments  of  his  power. 

Before  the  grand  age  of  Sargon  we  have  to  do 
with  a  different  world,  purely  Sumerian,  in  which 
the  interest  is  less  in  the  art,  and  more  in  the 
ideas  and  system  of  life.  In  dealing  with  this  age 
we  must  remember  how  very  different  was  the 
nature  of  the  country.  The  alluvial  deposits  of 
the  rivers  have  pushed  the  shore-line  of  the 
Persian  Gulf  continually  farther  aouth.  Forty- 
seven  miles  of  land  has  been  added  since 
Alexander.  Eridu,  now  a  hundred  and  sixty 
miles  from  the  coast,  was  on  the  sea  about  2500 
B.C.  Lagash,  Tell  Lo,  was,  however,  already 
built  in  the  time  of  Sargon.     According  to  these 


ERRATUM. 


T^age  69^  line  2,  for  2000  b,c.,  read  7000  b.c. 


COPPER  AGE  OF  SUMER  69 

data  the  site  of  Babylon  cannot  be  older  than 
about  2000  B.C.,  so  it  is  useless  to  expect  any- 
thing of  the  early  neolithic  or  oldest  population 
in  the  plain  south  of  that .  In  the  time  of  Naram- 
Sin  Susa  looked  down  on  the  Persian  Gulf,  and 
was  therefore  only  accessible  by  a  shore  route 
from  Babylonia. 

In  the  Sumerian  civilization  metals  were  fami- 
liar. The  Copper  Age  goes  back  to  the  earliest 
cemeteries  known,  as  it  did  also  in  Egypt;  and 
it  continued  down  to  Gudea,  and  perhaps  Ham- 
murabi, also  in  accord  with  its  date  in  Egypt. 
The  two  different  ideographs  used  for  copper 
have  been  supposed  to  show  the  use  of  copper 
and  bronze ;  but  it  is  more  likely  that  they  refer 
to  native  copper  hammered  into  shape,  and 
smelted  copper  from  ore  cast  into  shape.  Both 
sources  of  copper  were  used  in  early  times,  the 
native  copper  distinguished  by  the  bulgy  out- 
lines of  the  forms,  the  cast  copper  by  flat  planes 
or  by  relief  ornament.  The  copper  figures  found 
beneath  temples  as  a  foundation  deposit,  were 
perhaps  the  permanent  representatives  of  founda- 
tion sacrifices;  an  actual  sacrifice  would  decay 
and  disappear — the  copper  figure  of  it  was  per- 
manent, as  the  sculptured  offerings  of  the 
Egyptian  also  were  permanent.  Copper  was 
used  extensively  for  arms ;  the  spears  and  helmets 
of  the  troops  of  Eannatum  (D.  M.)  show  a  free 


76  MESOPOTAMIA 

use  of  metal,  and  a  ready  adaptation  of  it  in 
beaten  forms.  We  should  never  suspect  from 
objects  known  to  us  that  the  helmet  was  so 
commonly  used  then,  or  in  early  Crete,  were  it 
not  for  the  Eannatum  sculpture  and  the  Boxer 
vase  of  Hagia  Triada.  These  show  how  very 
incomplete  is  our  knowledge  of  the  ancient 
civilizations,  especially  in  those  subjects  which 
were  not  figured  on  monuments.  We  need 
vastly  more  material  before  any  argument  can 
be  based  on  the  absence  of  any  object,  or  a  blank 
in  the  history  of  art.  Warfare  was  much  de- 
veloped, as  the  troops  of  Eannatum  are  repre- 
sented in  close  phalanx  formation  covered  by  an 
overlapping  row  of  tair  shields,  between  which 
project  rows  of  long  spears,  like  the  Macedonian 
sarissa.  This  type  of  fighting  was  adapted  for 
the  wide  flat  plains,  in  which  it  could  move 
compactly. 

War  was  looked  on  as  a  struggle  of  the  gods, 
the  real  powers,  of  whom  men  were  only  the  instru- 
ments. It  is  even  said  that  the  god  of  an  enemy 
city  commanded  the  enemy  to  attack  the  narra- 
tor ;  and  it  is  the  gods  who  draw  up  treaties  and 
make  peace  with  each  other.  This  habit  of 
Sumerian  thought  is  also  found  in  Egypt,  where 
the  early  wars  are  all  described  as  conflicts  of 
the  gods — that  is  to  say,  of  the  tribes  who  wor- 
shipped those  gods  and  by  whom  they  were  com- 


CONNECTIONS  WITH  EGYPT        ft 

manded.  The  triumph  was — as  in  Egypt — 
recorded  on  a  gigantic  sculptured  mace-head, 
which  was  dedicated  in  the  temple  of  the  vic- 
torious god.  Another  similarity  to  Egyptian 
usage  lies  in  the  indications  of  royal  descent  in 
the  female  line.  On  the  large  tablet  of  King 
Urnina,  perhaps  4000  B.C.,  the  principal  figure 
is  his  daughter,  followed  by  four  of  his  sons. 
Later  on,  in  an  Elamite  dynasty,  kings  are  said 
to  be  "  sons  of  the  sister  "  of  a  predecessor;  and 
whether  this  is  literal,  or  only  '*  used  in  the  sense 
of  a  descendant  "  as  has  been  said,  it  shows 
a  parallel  to  well-known  cases  elsewhere  of 
rights  going  through  a  sister  and  not  a  direct 
descendant.  Another  Egyptian  parallel  is  in 
^he  naming  of  each  year  from  the  principal  event 
of  the  year.  All  of  these  resemblances — as  we 
shall  presently  see — are  most  likely  due  to  a 
common  ancestry  in  Elam. 

The  most  permanent  achievement  of  the 
Sumerian  was  the  establishment  of  the  commer- 
cial system  and  of  sexagesimal  division.  The 
accounts,  partnerships,  loans,  pledges,  partition 
of  profits,  credit  for  goods,  and  other  formulas 
of  modern  commerce,  are  all  descended  from 
the  Sumerians.  So  far  as  we  can  see,  the  Semitic 
Jew  showed  no  special  trading  capacity  until 
after  his  captivity  in  Babylon,  which  produced 
such  deep  and  permanent  changes  in  his  out- 


n  MESOPOTAMIA 

look  and  life.  It  was  the  Babylonian  trader 
who  was  the  figurehead  of  commerce  when 
our  written  history  formed  its  stock-phrases. 
Syria  became  Babylonianized,  as  the  cuneiform 
correspondence  shows;  the  Phoenician  took  up 
the  system  and  became  the  teacher  of  Greece, 
Carthage,  and  Spain.  The  Roman,  innocent  of 
wealth  when  he  began  conquering,  soon  became 
the  most  ravenous  of  plunderers  and  usurious  of 
lenders;  and  Europe  has  copied  him  since. 
Sumer  is  the  home-land  of  the  trading  system. 
Every  clock-face  descends  from  the  astronomy 
of  the  Sumerian,  who  divided  the  day  by  twelve, 
as  the  year  is  divided  in  twelve  months.  Every 
compass  card  also  shows  the  division  by  360°, 
copied  from  the  days  in  the  year.  The  Sumerian 
tradition  could  not  even  be  broken  up  by  the 
fanatic  decimalization  under  the  French  Re- 
public ;  and  it  will  be  a  troublesome  time  for  our 
money  system  if  we  abandon  a  division  by  six 
and  twelve,  founded  in  Nature,  in  favour  of  the 
artificiality  of  pure  decimals. 

The  earliest  Sumerian  remains  yet  known 
seem  to  be  in  some  cemeteries  at  Fara  and  Abu 
Hatab,  about  half-way  between  Basra  and  Bagh- 
dad. The  bodies  were  always  lying  on  the  side, 
contracted,  as  in  prehistoric  Egypt.  They  have 
weapons,  tools,  drinking-cups  and  food  vessels, 
beads  and  ornaments.     Cylinder  seals  were  used, 


ELAM  THE  SOURCE  7J 

and  writing  was  already  known,  as  a  few  tablets 
with  an  extremely  early  form  of  characters  were 
found  in  the  town.  The  whole  of  this  civiliza- 
tion should  be  thoroughly  examined,  and  com- 
pletely published  with  full  registration  of  all  the 
graves,  as  has  been  done  by  English  work  in 
Egypt.  So  far,  only  incomplete  studies  have 
been  made  at  any  Mesopotamian  site.  In  most 
cases  a  ruinous  system  of  trenching  and  pitting 
has  wrecked  the  historical  evidence,  and  hindered 
future  work.  Complete  clearances,  such  as  those 
made  in  Egypt,  should  be  the  rule  in  future, 
beginning  at  one  edge  of  a  site  and  turning  over 
everything  in  it,  layer  by  layer,  till  the  diggers 
finish  at  the  opposite  edge.  Only  in  this  way 
can  the  whole  material  be  secured,  and  recorded 
in  its  proper  historical  connection.  Where  there 
is  not  a  great  depth  of  superimposed  buildings, 
there  is  no  difficulty  in  complete  working. 

Lastly,  we  turn  to  the  home  whence  this 
civilization  seems  to  have  arisen.  Elam,  border- 
ing the  Tigris  on  the  east,  is  best  known  by  its 
capital  Susa,  keeping  guard  on  the  main  entry 
into  the  mountainous  region.  We  meet  here 
with  a  civilization  strongly  linked  with  that  of 
Sumer,  but  yet  having  various  independent  ele- 
ments. Though  cuneiform  writing  was  mainly 
used,  there  was  a  different  and  independent 
system  before  the  Semitic  conquest  by   Ham- 


74  MESOPOTAMIA 

murabi,  along  with  a  decimal  numeration,  instead 
of  the  Babylonian  sexagesimal. 

The  best-known  results  from  Susa  are  the 
monuments  which  were  taken  there  from  Baby- 
lonia as  spoil  of  war,  the  code  of  laws  of  Ham- 
murabi, and  the  triumphal  scene  of  Naram-Sin; 
but  those  are  only  adventitious,  and  the  real  im- 
portance of  Susa  itself  lies  in  its  earliest  levels. 
The  great  mound  consists  of  80  feet  depth  of 
ruins,  city  piled  on  city.  The  topmost  26  feet 
contain  the  buildings  of  4,000  years,  4500-500 
B.C.  Below  that  is  double  that  thickness  of 
ruins,  and  who  can  reasonably  grant  for  that  less 
than  double  the  time?  If  so,  we  range  back 
there  from  4000  to  12000  B.C.  Altogether 
thirteen  successive  rebuildings  can  be  traced  in 
the  whole  depth  of  the  mound,  averaging,  there- 
fore, about  900  years  apart.  At  a  depth  of 
65  feet,  perhaps  8^000  or  loooo  B.C.,  there  is  a 
stratum  with  roughl}^  painted  pottery,  and 
rudely  cut  seals.  But  on  reaching  the  bottom 
the  great  surprise  is  to  find  finely 'made  thin 
wheel-turned  pottery,  painted  with  an  abund- 
ance of  geometrical  patterns.  Happily  a  ceme- 
tery of  that  same  age  has  been  found,  and  has 
supplied  a  great  quantity  of  this  fine  pottery 
quite  perfect.  This  shows  that  even  Susa  is  by 
no  means  the  beginning  of  civilization,  that  its 
oldest   levels   were  in   a   high   state   of  culture. 


GEOLOGY  LINKED  TO  HISTORY     75 

This  age  is  further  marked  by  flint  working  of 
characteristic  Solutrean  forms;  and  such  would 
agree  with  the  fact  that  the  rather  later  age  of 
prehistoric  Egypt  shows  Magdalenian  forms  of 
flint  working.  In  Egypt  the  Solutrean  style  is 
only  found  on  the  open  desert,  and  has  never  in 
a  single  case  been  found  in  graves.  The  result 
from  the  archaeological  position,  therefore,  would 
be  to  date  roughly  the  Magdalenian  to  about 
6000  to  9000  B.C.,  and  the  Solutrean  to  9000  to 
1 2000  B.C.  Such  dates  would  be  probat)ly  halved 
by  the  German  antiquaries,  or  doubled  by  the 
geologists.  We  may  be  well  content,  therefore, 
to  leave  them  at  this,  as  the  least  improbable 
statement  for  the  present. 

As  Egypt  only  rose  to  pottery-making  in  the 
Magdalenian  stage,  while  Susa  w^as  making  and 
painting  fine  pottery  in  the  Solutrean  stage,  it  is 
evident  that  Elam  was  a  whole  cycle  ahead  of 
Egypt  in  its  development. 

Now  this  agrees  with  one  of  the  greatest  recent 
discoveries.  An  ivory  handle  with  a  flint  knife 
was  found  in  Egypt,  but  of  entirely  non- Egyptian 
work  (A.  E.,  191 7,  26).  The  flint  knife  is  known 
by  its  work  to  belong  to  the  middle  of  the  second 
prehistoric  age,  say  about  6500  b.c:  but  the 
Egyptians  were  at  that  stage  far  behind  the 
style  of  this  handle  in  their  carving.  The  de- 
cisive point  on  the  handle  is  the  figure  of  a  hero 


^6  MESOPOTAMIA 

grappling  a  lion  on  each  side  of  him.  He  wears  a 
long  coat,  a  cap  with  turn-up  brim,  and  has  a 
full  beard.  Obviously  this  is  a  cold-country 
type,  and  the  subject  of  a  hero  between  lions  is 
certainly  Persian.  The  cap  is  like  that  worn  by 
Gudea.  The  lions  are  cold-country  lions  with 
heavy  manes  and  chest  fur.  The  only  conclusion 
seems  to  be  that  this  is  a  mythologic  type 
brought  from  the  highlands  of  Elam.  The  rest 
of  the  carving  of  the  animals  is  exquisite,  and  has 
seldom  been  rivalled,  never  surpassed.  There 
is  here  the  work  of  a  supreme  school  of  art* 
originating  in  Elam,  and  a  whole  cycle  earlier 
than  the  fine  ivory  carving  of  the  first  dynasty  in 
Egypt. 

To  find  this  school  in  the  earliest  Elamite 
remains  is  one  of  the  most  urgent  matters  in  the 
history  of  art.  There  must  be  a  whole  class  of 
fine  work  leading  up  to  this  and  following  it, 
and  Elam  is  the  ground  for  discovering  it.  Out- 
side of  modern  Persia  it  might  be  well  to  examine 
what  was  the  old  shore  of  the  Persian  Gulf  along 
the  foot  of  the  mountains  west  of  Susa,  as  that 
would  be  a  likely  place  for  early  settlements. 

We  have  now  reviewed  the  many  problems  of 
history  and  of  art  which  await  proper  research  in 
Mesopotamia .  Without  timely  control  much  will 
be  ruined,  and  much  will  be  rendered  inaccessible 
by  private  claims  that  are  sure  to  arise.     We 


THE  DUTY  OF  RESEARCH  ri 

need  to  step  in  at  once,  and  secure,  before  it  is 
too  late,  the  grand  field  of  human  history  which 
lies  before  us.  It  will  take  several  generations 
of  excavators  before  it  is  fully  examined,  and  it 
is  the  great  responsibility  which  has  fallen  upon 
us  to  resume  the  work  so  actively  begun  two 
generations  ago,  and  securely  to  control  private 
speculation  and  greed,  in  the  interest  of  scientific 
work.  Eighty  years  ago  England  began  the 
exploration  with  two  paddle-steamers;  now  we 
have  the  flotilla  of  Yarrow  steamers  on  the 
Tigris,  we  should  similarly  expand  our  care  for 
history  as  well  as  for  political  results. 


THE   FUTURE 


THE  FUTURE 

In  the  midst  of  enormous  political  uncertainties 
it  may  seem  quite  premature  to  discuss  what  our 
future  course  should  be  in  peace.  But  we  are 
already  pledged  to  a  definite  course  politically, 
if  we  can  succeed  in  controlling  it.  The  British 
Government  is  committed  to  the  principle  of  a 
Jewish  State  in  Palestine,  and  therefore  the 
questions  that  must  arise  in  such  a  course  are  by 
no  means  barred.  It  is  also  committed  to  the 
principle  of  an  independent  rule  in  Mesopotamia, 
and  therefore  the  present  Turkish  law  -would  be 
also  superseded  there. 

We  may  be  asked  why  we  should  be  in  a  hurry 
to  consider  administrative  questions;  let  them 
arise  in  future,  and  be  dealt  with  when  they 
arise.  We  have  already  followed  this  course  in 
Cyprus  and  in  Egypt,  with  disastrous  results. 
It  is  to  prevent  the  recurrence  of  such  disasters 
in  the  other  centres  of  ancient  civilization,  for 
which  we  may  be  responsible,  that  we  must 
consider  the  necessary  conditions  in  good  time. 
If  we  wait  until  the  scandals  of  destruction  are 

8i  6 


^2  CHANCE  OR  CARE  ? 

known  to  all,  we  shall  wait  until  it  is  too  late 
to  do  our  duty. 

The  importance  of  the  questions  of  conserva- 
tion is  even  more  urgent  than  it  was  in  other 
countries.  The  custody  of  the  Holy  Places  has 
been  the  most  burning  question  of  piety,  of 
fanaticism,  and  of  intrigue,  among  the  Christian 
Powers,  and  is  in  most  cases  complicated  by  the 
Jewish  and  the  Turkish  claims.  To  leave  this 
fermenting  mixture  to  the  mere  chances  of 
casual  possession  or  action  would  be  folly.  To 
leave  the  destruction  of  the  great  centres  of 
our  early  civilization  to  the  mere  chance  of 
profitable  exploitation  would  be  behaving  like 
the  beasts  that  perish.  As  Epictetus  says,  the 
cattle  at  the  market  think  of  nothing  but  the 
fodder,  and  possessions  and  prosperity  are  the 
mere  fodder  of  man ;  if  he  thinks  of  nothing  but 
them,  how  is  he  better  than  the  cattle  ?  If  we 
are  to  have  no  interests  beyond  those  of  animals, 
how  can  we  justify  our  human  existence  ?  The 
growth  of  the  mind  of  man,  how  he  has  achieved 
his  present  control  of  nature,  how  his  knowledge 
and  ability  has  fluctuated,  is  of  obvious  interest 
to  every  intelligence  above  mere  fodder.  It  is 
this  history  which  lies  in  our  hands  in  the  East, 
and  which  it  is  our  duty  to  conserve.  Real 
politik  is  the  enemy  of  the  human  mind,  as  its 
concerns  are  only  those  of  animals. 


PROCLAMATION  ON  ANTIQUITIES  83 

The  present  position  is  a  turning-point,  where 
we  have  a  clear  field  for  reasoned  action, 
and  where  those  by  whom  the  mistakes  of  the 
past  have  occurred  are  no  more — I  shall  not  name 
them.  Moreover,  owing  to  the  war,  their  succes- 
sors have  not  yet  shown  their  intentions,  and 
thus  we  cannot  contradict  them.  Perhaps  the 
official  mind  may  sometimes  be  typified  by  its 
action  at  Delhi  in  dropping  the  Koh-i-nur  into 
the  waistcoat  pocket  and  forgetting  all  about  it, 
until  humbly  asked  if  the  stone  is  wanted. 

We  may  hope  to  see  an  efficient  management 
established  if  the  preliminary  proclamation  by 
the  late  Sir  Stanley  Maude  in  Mesopotamia  is 
properly  followed  up,  and  not  allowed  by  apathy 
to  lapse,  like  so  many  good  preliminaries  started 
by  able  men.  As  that  proclamation  has  been 
little — if  at  all — noticed  in  England,  I  may 
state  its  scope:  (i)  The  rights  of  the  Ottoman 
Government  in  all  antiquities  are  transferred  to 
the  new  Administration.  (2)  Antiquities  mean 
everything  before  a.d.  1500.  (3)  Information  of 
discovery  of  antiquities  must  be  given  within 
thirty  days,  under  penalty.  (4)  Anyone  appro- 
priating things  discovered  may  be  fined  up  to 
ten  times  the  value.  (5)  Any  negligent  or  mali- 
cious damage  of  any  kind  may  be  heavily  fined. 
(6)  No  traffic  in  antiquities  is  allowed  without 
license,  under  heavy  fine      (7)  All  forgery,  or 


84  MONUMENTS 

sale  of  forgeries,  is  liable  to  heavy  fine,  and  con- 
fiscation of  stock.  (8)  On  reporting  discoveries 
the .  owner  shall  be  duly  compensated  for  the 
value  if  the  objects  are  taken;  if  not  required  by 
the  Administration  a  certificate  will  be  given 
that  it  may  be  sold.  (9)  The  Chief  Political 
Ofiicer  is  the  authority  for  this  Administration. 
All  this  is  admirable,  and  could  not  be 
bettered  as  a  code  for  a  military  occupation. 
But  that  does  not  imply  that  it  is  perfect  as  a 
permanent  code  for  civil  life.  What  we  should 
consider — ^now  that  the  first  step  has  been  taken 
— ^is  how  the  requirements  can  be  met,  subject 
to  the  normal  conditions  of  intercolirse,  trade, 
and  the  permanent  preservation  of  history. 
We  will  notice  the  various  kinds  of  responsibility 
separately. 

A.  Monuments. 

The  most  obvious  of  all  duty  is  the  conserva- 
tion of  known  monuments.  There  are  many 
causes  of  destruction;  the  most  evident  is  the 
demand  for  materials.  The  temple  on  Elephan- 
tine— one  of  the  most  perfect  in  Egypt — ^was 
cut  to  pieces  to  build  a  powder  magazine.  The 
triumphal  arch  and  colonnades  of  Antinoe  were 
carried  off  to  build  sugar  works.  The  complete 
Roman  camp  at  Alexandria  was  pulled  to  pieces 
to  build  a  palace,  abandoned  as  a  useless  toy 


DESTRUCTION  IN  EGYPT  85 

soon  after.  The  Roman  houses  in  Mareotis  are 
being  used  as  quarries  to  build  new  farm's.  The 
brick  buildings  throughout  Egypt  are  sold  as 
materials  by  the  Department  of  Antiquities,  for 
a  trifling  fee  from  the  destroyers ;  so  perishes  early 
Christian  Egypt.  Roman  marble  columns  were 
in  request  by  the  late  Khedive  for  garden 
rollers.  Every  piece  of  stone  that  is  unearthed 
is  used  for  building  or  burnt  into  lime. 

Another  cause  is  the  vicious  demand  for  frag- 
ments of  monuments,  mainly  by  the  tourist, 
but  also  fostered  even  by  national  museums. 
The  sculptured  rock  halls  of  the  tombs  at  Beni 
Hasan  and  Tell  Amarna,  that  have  stood  un- 
harmed for  thousands  of  years,  were  attacked, 
and  the  finest  pieces  cut  out  of  them,  with  the 
collateral  destruction  of  much  more.  The  most 
beautifully  sculptured  tomb  at  Thebes  had 
the  best  parts  prized  away — now  in  Berlin. 
Another,  a  painted  tomb,  was  wrecked,  and  its 
fragments  are  in  Florence.  The  most  beautiful 
of  the  early  sculptured  tombs  was  ruined,  and 
the  broken  fragment  of  the  best  part  is  in  the 
British  Museum.  These  pieces  have  all  been 
obtained  with  open  eyes,  knowing  quite  well 
how  they  were  stolen,  and  what  damage  was 
done  for  this  filthy  lucre. 

Another  cause  of  destruction  is  sheer  thought- 
lessness of  those  responsible.     The  largest  fresco 


86        WRECKAGE  OF  MONUMENTS 

pavement  known,  almost  perfect,  more  than 
three  thousand  years  old,  was  discovered  by  me, 
and  carefully  housed  and  preserved,  without 
costing  the  Government  anything.  No  provision 
was  made  by  the  authorities  for  proper  access 
to  it  by  visitors ;  and  so  the  end  came  when  the 
natives  smashed  it  to  pieces,  to  avoid  being 
troubled  by  tourists.  The  rock  monuments  of 
Sinai,  some  of  the  most  important  known,  dating 
from  the  pyramid  kings,  were  left  to  be  destroyed 
by  a  commercial  company,  duly  licensed  to  work 
by  the  Government.  Of  a  very  fine  sculptured 
tomb  which  I  found,  the  official  decision  declined 
the  removal  of  it  to  museums  for  safety,  yet  gave 
it  no  protection;  within  three  years  it  was 
wrecked  by  dealers. 

Now  these  are  only  little  samples  of  what  is 
constantly  going  on  throughout  Egypt,  in  spite 
of  a  supposed  protection  by  officials.  Unless  a 
very  different  kind  of  conservation  is  provided, 
the  same  state  of  wreckage  will  go  on  throughout 
Syria  and  Mesopotamia.  The  state  of  those 
countries  will  not  remain  as  hitherto  under 
Turkish  apathy  and  obstruction.  Fresh  activi- 
ties, new  interests,  rapid  exploitation,  will 
happily  ensue,  on  security  of  life  and  property 
being  gained.  But  all  this  spells  destruction 
to  history  if  proper  and  efficient  steps  are  not 
taken  in  time.     We  cannot  shut  our  eyes;  the 


INSPECTION  NEEDFUL  87 

examples  are  abundantly  before  us;  a  sin  of 
omission  is  as  deadly  as  a  sin  of  commission; 
and  the  man  who  will  not  protect  things  from 
inevitable  attack  is  just  as  much  a  barbarian  as 
if  he  melted  up  Charles  at  Charing  Cross,  or  took 
the  coffin  of  Edward  I.  for  a  horse-trough. 

The  towns  of  Roman  Age  in  North  Syria  and 
the  Hauran  are  still  in  marvellous  preservation. 
In  South  Syria  I  have  walked  through  a  Roman 
town  stilrin  full  use,  and  seen  a  great  hall  with 
the  stone  roofing  still  perfect.  All  this  must  not 
be  left  to  be  destroyed,  as  the  Circassian  settlers 
have  destroyed  Turmanin  and  the  other  Roman 
churches.  Perhaps  the  most  practical  course 
would  be  to  encourage  the  re-roofing  and  occupa- 
tion of  buildings  when  possible,  with  prohibition 
of  alteration  by  the  tenants.  Whatever  policy 
is  adopted,  it  is  useless  to  issue  it  in  an  official 
journal,  which  no  one  reads  except  officials. 
A  travelling  Inspector  should  visit  each  such 
place,  summon  the  headmen,  proclaim  that 
digging  or  damage  will  be  punished,  and  leave 
a  rough  large-scale  plan  in  bold  writing,  defining 
the  Government  reservation.  In  many  cases 
it  would  be  better  to  pay  a  subsidy  to  the  local 
authority,  rather  than  spend  the  money  on  an 
ineffective  guard. 

The  whole  question  of  the  Holy  Places  is  more 
complex.     It  caiinot  be  left  to  sectarian  crimes, 


88  SITES 

such  as  the  destruction  of  the  monuments  of  the 
Latin  kings  of  Jerusalem  by  the  Greek  Church 
a  century  ago.  Nor  can  any  of  the  sites  be  left 
to  be  appropriated  by  a  sect,  with  rights  of  altera- 
tion and  destruction.  The  best  hope  seems  to  be 
in  a  guard  of  mixed  nationality,  not  ecclesiastical, 
appointed  by  the  Board  of  Antiquities :  this 
would  give  the  greatest  freedom  of  access  by  all 
religions,  while  preventing  damage  by  the  ex- 
clusive claims  of  any  one  party. 


B.  Sites. 

Not  only  do  visible  monuments  require  pro- 
tection, but  also  the  invisible.  Beneath  each  of 
the  innumerable  mounds  that  dot  the  landscape 
in  Syria  and  Mesopotamia  there  are  buildings 
more  or  less  perfect.  Sometimes  an  entire 
building  has  become  earthed  over,  twenty  or 
fifty  f^et  underground,  by  later  houses.  All  of 
these  buildings  need  preservation,  and  cannot 
be  left  to  be  quarried  out  as  mere  masonry. 
In  Egypt  most  of  the  ancient  sites  have  been 
claimed  by  land  grabbers  within  living  memory. 
One  great  town  site  of  mounds  has  been  appro- 
priated bit  by  bit,  without  being  of  the  least  use 
to  the  claimants.  It  cannot  be  cultivated, 
being  too  high  and  hilly ;  it  has  only  been  claimed 
as  a  matter  of  grab,  each  person  wishing  to  fore. 


CLAIMS  OF  SQUATTERS  89 

stall  another.  Yet  the  day  that  any  attempt 
is  made  to  clear  the  ancient  temple  within  it, 
the  claimants  put  in  their  assumed  rights  and 
stop  work.  Now  this  sort  of  useless  and'  ob- 
structive possession  will  at  once  grow  in  any 
country  which  is  unguarded.  The  top  of  every 
heap  of  ruins  will  have  a  squatter  putting  up  a 
shanty  at  his  fancy,  and  claiming  the  whole 
place.  Officials  will  not  take  the  trouble  to 
assert  Government  rights  in  land,  as  it  is  a  dis- 
tasteful worry  to  do  so.  When  once  a  private 
claim  is  begun  the  mischief  is  done.  The 
Egyptian  Government  has  only  very  tardily  and 
feebly  ejected  squatters,  even  from  the  rock 
tombs  of  Thebes ;  and  when  once  there  is  a  ques- 
tion of  nationality  involved,  as  in  some  Levan- 
tine drink-shop,  no  one  will  trouble  to  meddle 
with  it.  When  Ismayl  Pasha  wished  to  clear  the 
Ezbekiyeh  as  a  public  square  for  Cairo,  he  was 
met  by  dozens  or  hundreds  of  vested  interests 
in  little  shanties  of  drink-shops  and  cafes.  He 
took  the  only  practicable  course.  A  few  of 
them  mysteriously  caught  fire  one  night;  a  few 
more  the  next  night;  again  and  again  they 
vanished;  until  all  the  squatters  retreated  for 
fear  of  worse  things  happening. 

Beside  the  obvious  mounds  of  ruins  there  are 
the  ancient  cemeteries  which  may  all  be  seized 
for  private  property.     Such  is  the  fate  of  tl:ie 


90         ACCIDENTAL  DISCOVERIES 

cemetery  of  Heliopolis,  now  swallowed  in  the 
sandy  wastes  round  villas,  which  are  called 
gardens.  The  only  way  to  protect  these  rights 
of  future  working  and  discovery  is  to  send  round 
an  Inspector  who  knows  an  ancient  site  when  he 
sees  it,  and  for  him  to  proclaim  all  such  sites 
which  are  now  unoccupied,  mark  them  on  a  plan 
given  to  the  headman,  and  make  it  quite  clear 
to  the  neighbourhood  that  anyone  using  such 
land  may  be  turned  out  without  any  rights  what- 
ever, by  anyone  else  who  likes  to  shift  them. 
Rights  are  manufactured  without  hesitation  in 
Egypt.  A  man  claimed  land  as  his  of  old,  and 
pointed  out  a  fine  palm-tree  to  the  Land  In- 
spector as  a  proof  of  his  long  possession.  On 
giving  a  push  to  the  tree  it  fell  over,  for  it  was  only 
a  trunk  which  he  had  stuck  in  the  ground  the 
night  before,  to  serve  as  evidence  for  inspection. 


C.  Accidental  Discoveries. 
The  greater  the  activities  in  -any  country,  the 
more  discoveries  will  be  made  casually,  in  course 
of  other  work.  Such  discoveries  should  be  en- 
couraged, but  controlled.  They  often  lead  to 
work  of  great  importance,  and  no  sort  of  check 
should  be  put  on  them.  At  present  there  is  a 
fear  of  Government  causing  hardship  by  expro- 
priation in  Egypt,  and  a  wish  therefore  to  conceal 


BOARD  FOR  ANTIQUITIES  91 

any  ancient  buildings  that  may  be  found.  The 
course  should  be  to  induce  all  discoveries  to  be 
reported  to  the  Inspector,  by  paying  small  re- 
wards for  information,  and  paying  a  full  value 
in  case  of  expropriation.  For  small  objects  that 
are  movable  the  Inspector  should  pay  a  full 
local  value,  and  full  weight  or  more  for  gold  and 
silver.  Only  by  being  the  best  buyer  will  he 
secure  what  is  found.  Any  kind  of  repression 
loses  far  more  than  it  gains.  The  difficulties 
of  Government  monopoly  we  notice  farther  on. 


D.  The  Board  for  Antiquities. 

The  management  of  the  antiquities  necessarily 
must  be  controlled  by  a  department ;  and  so  many 
interests  and  considerations  are  involved  that  a 
Board  of  Trustees  seems  needful  to  direct  the 
policy.  Such  a  Board  should  enact  the  by-laws 
for  the  control  of  the  subject,  in  harmony  with 
the  requirements  of  other  departments.  The 
museum  management  and  Inspectors  should  be 
responsible  to  the  Board  directly;  while  the 
local  guards  would  be  managed  by  the  Inspectors. 
Every  agent  of  the  Board  should  be  in  the  police 
force,  with  full  powers. 

The  failure  of  protection  in  Egypt  has  been 
mainly  due,  not  to  the  officials  employed,  but  to 
the  impossible  condition  of  the  laws  and  regu- 


92      EFFICIENT  PENALTIES  NEEDED 

lations.  When  the  head  of  the  Department  in- 
stituted seventy-five  prosecutions  for  damage 
and  theft,  he  only  got  three  convictions.  When 
the  thief  of  a  statue  was  tracked  by  his  footprints, 
and  full  collateral  evidence  was  obtained,  he  was 
acquitted  at  a  cost  of  ;g40.  It  is  useless  to  try 
any  such  cases  like  common  thefts;  the  local 
court  is  not  only  corrupt  in  all  its  underlings,  but 
it  sympathizes  with  the  thief,  and  will  do  nothing 
to  hinder  him.  It  is  obviously  undesirable  that 
it  should  be  needful  to  invite  the  judge  to  break- 
fast before  a  case  comes  on,  in  order  to  get  a  con- 
viction. Yet  a  prudent  Inspector  will  have  to 
do  so.  The  remedy  is  to  put  the  judging  of  all 
such  cases  in  the  nominees  of  the  Board  for 
Antiquities.  All  offences  should  be  first  assessed 
by  the  Inspector ;  if  the  dehnquent  elects  to  pay 
the  amount  to  the  tax  collector,  the  matter  is 
closed;  if  he  prefers  to  go  before  the  judge  named 
by  the  Board,  he  can  do  so. 

The  appointment  of  this  Board  should  rest 
with  the  controlling  Power  or  Powers.  It  need 
not  be  resident  in  the  country,  if  there  is  a  diffi- 
culty in  finding  fit  persons  who  understand  the 
subject.  The  functions  being  only  to  appoint 
agents  and  decide  on  policy,  the  knowledge  of  the 
members  of  the  Board  is  the  first  consideration. 
For  Palestine  as  a  Jewish  State  the  Board  might 
consist  largely  of  Jewish   archaeologists.     Cele- 


PRIVATE  RESEARCH  93 

brated  names  of  such  rise  to  mind  at  once,  in 
France,  England,  and  other  lands;  men  who 
would  be  above  sectarian  prejudice,  and  help  to 
control  the  Targe  interests  involved,  in  a  sym- 
pathetic spirit. 


E.  Direction  of  Research. 

Unless  a  Government  is  ready  for  quite  unpre- 
cedented expenditure,  it  is  advisable  to  make  use 
of  the  zeal  and  resources  of  archaeologists  of 
other  countries.  Even  in  Egypt,  where  all 
nationalities  may  work,  the  Government  reserva- 
tion would  cost  nearly  a  million  to  clear,  and 
take  several  centuries  at  the  present  rate. 
Evidently  long  before  that  would  be  finished, 
lapses  of  management  must  occur,  and  every- 
thing be  plundered  anyhow.  The  only  course  is 
firmly  and  carefully  to  regulate  all  work  on 
proper  lines.  We  have  seen  in  Egypt,  under 
Government  permission,  clearances  by  plunder- 
ing natives  who  mix  up  all  they  find  and  destroy 
its  value,  clearances  by  foreign  museum  agents 
to  fill  a  museum  without  any  record  or  publica- 
tion, clearances  with  a  record  kept  entirely 
private  and  results  refused  publication  for  ten 
or  twenty  years,  clearances  by  speculators  who 
are  entirely  ignorant  of  the  meaning  or  import- 
ance of  what  they  find  or  destroy.     The  mere 


94  KINDS  OF  EXCAVATORS 

making  of  an  official  inventory,  like  a  list  of  a 
dealer's  shop,  is  almost  useless.  It  leaves  out 
of  account  all  that  gives  value  to  the  discoveries 
— the  position,  date,  relation  to  other  things,  and 
local  meaning. 

In  Cyprus  our  management  has  yielded 
equally  bad  results.  Of  the  main  plunderer  it 
is  said,  *'  So  far  as  his  statements  can  be  checked, 
they  are  inaccurate  and  misleading."  Of 
another  excavator  there,  '*  You  never  can  be- 
lieve anything  he  says."  There  was  no  check  on 
the  capability  of  the  excavators,  or  on  the 
permanence  of  their  results. 

Doubtless  the  public — and  often  the  official — 
view  is  that  so  long  as  things  are  dug. up,  it  does 
not  matter  how.  Does  the  public  know  any- 
thing about  the  detail  of  electrical  or  biological 
research,  or  even  how  it  digests  its  dinner  ? 
Does  the  public  understand  the  researches  that 
have  subdued  plague,  typhus,  and  yellow  fever? 
Just  as  little  does  the  public  understand  the 
knowledge  involved  in  scientific  excavating: 
The  familiarity  with  the  minute  variations  of 
style  and  art,  the  sense  of  comparative  art  of  all 
the  regions  in  question ;  the  memory  of  thousands 
of  points  of  comparison;  the  chemical  and 
mechanical  care  needed  to  preserve  things;  the 
incessant  observation  requisite  for  noting  passing 
details  on  which  the  whole  meaning  may  depend; 


REQUISITES  FOR  EXCAVATING     95 

the  necessity  for  understanding  precisely  the 
period  and  the  meaning  of  everything  as  it  is 
uncovered,  of  reading  the  results  hour  Idj  hour, 
so  as  to  know  what  next  to  look  for,  and  what 
may  be  a  critical  detail,  perhaps  wiped  out  of 
existence  in  a  few  minutes  of  digging;  the 
knowledge  of  the  languages  that  may  be  met 
with;  the  incessant  discipline  of  hundreds  of 
workers,  to  ensure  their  care,  attention,  and 
fidelity,  without  which  nothing  can  be  done; 
the  mapping  of  everything  in  detail — for  in- 
stance, the  temple  foundations  at  Abydos  re- 
quired over  5,000  measurements  to  disentangle 
nine  superimposed  plans.  Is  it,  then,  to  be  sup- 
posed that  the  first  person  who  comes  along  with 
a  desire  to  dig  can  be  allowed  to  do  so  without 
destroying  much  more  than  he  preserves  ? 

The  first  requisite  to  be  demanded  is  that  any- 
one managing  excavations  shall  have  already 
produced  sound  published  work  under  the  direc- 
tion of  a  skilled  manager.  Secondly,  that  he 
record  fully,  and  publish  in  full  and  detailed 
manner  within  two  years.  Thirdly,  that  every- 
thing found  shall  go  to  public  museums,  except 
great  numbers  of  duplicates.  The  independent 
help  of  societies  or  wealthy  men  is  to  be  welcomed 
if  these  conditions  are  observed.  A  uniform 
system  of  giving  the  full  local  value  of  antiqui- 
ties to  the  workmen  is  essential.     Without  that 


96   PRESERVATION  OF  DISCOVERIES 

no  care  will  prevent  things  being  stolen.  During 
some  excavations  it  has  been  a  scandal  to  see 
the  dealers'  shops  full  of  sculpture  and  antiqui- 
ties, obviously  robbed  from  the  site  worked; 
and,  by  their  removal,  crippling  the  understand- 
ing and  planning  of  the  buildings.  Almost 
every  year  gold  is  found  in  properly  paid  excava- 
tions, from  tens  to  hundreds  of  pounds'  worth; 
scarcely  ever  is  gold  known  from  excavations 
without  full  rewards.  The  best  and  finest 
things  never  reach  the  director's  hands  without 
giving  full  rewards. 


F.  Museum  Administration. 

An  essential  question  that  must  be  quickly 
settled  is  that  of  local  or  central  museums. 
There  must  be  much  heavy  material  which  will 
not  be  worth  transport,  or  the  expensive  housing 
of  a  first-class  museum ;  if  a  local  museum  is  not 
provided,  all  this  is  lost.  Yet  it  is  a  mistake 
to  have  mere  dumping-places,  to  which  every- 
thing that  is  not  attractive  is  condemned.  In 
the  so-called  museum  at  Mykense  there  were — 
perhaps  still  are — ^large  boxes  full  of  important 
bronze  work  left  open  under  the  tables,  from 
Schliemann's  excavations,  unpublished  and  un- 
cared  for.  All  of  this  should  have  been  properly 
made  accessible  to  study,  locally  and  in  books. 


COSTLY  INEFFICIENCY  9; 

The  local  museum  cannot  work  well  unless  it  has 
an  efficient  curator,  or  at  least  a  fixed  share  in 
the  work  of  such. 

The  mistake  is  usually  made  of  spending  money 
on  architectural  freaks,  instead  of  on  the  proper 
housing  and  exhibiting  of  the  contents  of  a 
museum.  In  Cairo  a  museum  was  to  cost 
£80,000;  by  the  incapacity  of  the  architect 
;£2 50,000  has  been  spent  on  it.  The  result  is 
much  worse  for  its  purposes  than  might  have 
been  secured  for  £40,000  if  spent  legitimately  in 
preserving  collections.  It  is  at  present  the  grave 
of  its  contents,  much  of  which  can  never  be 
appreciated,  or  even  seen,  in  the  existing  con- 
ditions. In  almost  all  countries,  even  France 
and  Italy,  old  buildings  that  are  entirely  un- 
suitable are  used  to  house  the  National  Collec- 
tions. In  England,  where  we  have  special 
museum  buildings,  architects  have  not  yet 
found  out  the  first  principles  required.  There 
should  not — and  need  not — be  a  single  point  in 
a  museum  without  direct  lighting,  and  no  cross- 
light  should  be  allowed.  Dead  walls  between 
lights  prove  the  incapacity  of  the  designer. 
When  suitable  museum  space  is  required  let  it 
be  devised  by  an  experienced  curator,  a  photo- 
grapher (for  no  one  else  understands  lighting), 
and  an  engineer.  If  money  suffices,  an  architect 
may  then  put  a  fagade  to  the  required  building, 

7 


98  WRECKAGE  IN  CYPRUS 

but   must  not  be  allowed  to  spoil  the   utility 
of  it. 

This  needs  saying  after  what  has  been  done 
by    purely    British    administration    in    Cyprus: 
*'  The  British  Government  of  Cyprus  has  hitherto 
spent  nothing  in  maintaining,  or  even  in  properly 
storing,  the  Collections  for  which  it  is  responsible. 
Many  of  them  lay  for  years  in  the  outhouses  of 
the  Commissioner's  office  in  Nicosia,  exposed  to 
all  kinds  of  ill-usage.  .  .  .     A  large  part  of  the 
Government    Collection    has    lost     almost    all 
scientific  value."     The  wreckage  of  destruction, 
losses,    and   waste   described  in   the   catalogue, 
is  incredible  if  we  suppose  it  to  be  the  action  of 
educated   men.     There  is   no   prospect   of  any 
better  fate  for  the  history  of  Palestine  and  Meso- 
potamia, if  a  proper  administration  is  not  set 
up.     If  we  will  not,  or  cannot,  understand  it 
in  our  official  minds,  let  us  hand  over  all  antiqui- 
ties to  American  control ;  for  there  is  no  country 
where  the  utility  and  conduct  of  museums  is 
better  understood.     We  cannot  claim  the  privi- 
lege of  destruction,  when  other  nations  under- 
stand the  privilege  of  conservation. 

A  most  essential  branch  of  museum  work  is 
publishing.     It  is  unfortunately  very  little  under- v 
stood.     Most  museums  never  publish  their  con- 
tents efficiently.     The  Leyden  Museum  has  done 
better  than  any  other,  both  in  its  old  works  and 


NEED  OF  PUBLISHING  99 

in  those  now  in  progress.  The  publication  of 
museums  is  all  the  more  essential  now  that  any 
building  may  be  wrecked  by  aircraft,  or  ruthlessly 
plundered,  as  the  Serbian,  Rumanian,  and 
Russian  museums.  A  director  of  publishing 
should  know  everything  about  processes,  prices, 
and  the  book-market,  and  have  control  of  all 
publications,  both  official  and  by  outside  excava- 
tors. He  should  also  publish  by  supplying 
casts  and  electrotypes  readily.  A  very  desirable 
course  would  be  to  have  ten  or  twenty  sets  of 
electrotypes  of  all  the  gold  and  silver  work  of 
ancient  art  in  each  country,  and  (exchange  them 
among  all  great  museums,  so  that  the  inevitable 
plundering  and  destruction  which  falls  so  heavily 
on  intrinsic  valuables  should  not  destroy  scienti- 
fic study  in  the  future.  Half  a  dozen  museums 
have  been  robbed  of  all  their  gold-work  in  twenty 
years,  and  the  losses  in  Russia  and  elsewhere 
at  present,  by  public  and  private  robbery,  cannot 
yet  be  guessed. 


G.  Government  Monopoly. 

In  many  countries  the  Government  claims  a 
monopoly  of  all  antiquities,  as  in  Greece  and 
Turkey;  or  a  modified  monopoly,  as  in  Egypt, 
where  claims  are  facultative ;  or  as  in  Italy,  where 
private  possession  is  allowed,  but  not  export 


100      GOVERNMENT  MONOPOLIES 

without  permission;  or  as  in  Britain,  where  gold 
and  silver  that  has  been  hidden  is  treasure-trove 
to  the  Government,  but  not  when  it  has  been 
lost.  It  may  be  safely  asserted  that  every 
Government  loses  by  such  restrictions.  It  is 
solely  a  question  of  money.  Each  Government 
could  secure  all  it  claims  by  payment  instead  of 
by  force.  Its  claims  serve  to  establish  an  ex- 
tensive and  able  secret  service  for  export.  And 
the  prohibitions  only  serve  to  retain  things 
which  are  not  worth  the  expense  of  using  this 
secret  service.  No  prohibitory  laws  can  retain 
the  things  which  will  pay  to  export.  You  may 
buy  a  full-sized  bronze  chariot  in  Rome,  and  con- 
tract to  pay  on  delivery  in  Paris;  and  it  comes 
as  a  matter  of  business.  You  may  agree  to  buy 
a  large  picture,  and  it  crosses  the  frontier  in 
the  roof  of  an  omnibus.  You  may  walk  through 
the  Greek  customs  with  a  priceless  vase — if  you 
put  a  plant  in  it  and  a  pink  paper  round  it. 
There  is  not  a  great  museum  that  is  not  fed  by 
illegal  channels,  which  it  knows  and  trusts. 
If  the  prohibitive  laws  do  not  retain  the  best 
things,  they  are  worse  than  useless;  for'  if 
there  were  a  free  supply  of  the  second  best, 
it  would  often  check  the  foreign  demand  for  the 
finest. 

The  claims  of  a  Grovernment  to  seize  upon  dis- 
coveries are  still  more  unworkable.     In  Italy  a 


LOST  TREASURES  loi 

Commission  is  appointed  to  keep  watch  on  ex- 
cavations.    Such  a  Commission  could  not  pre- 
vent  a   large  jar   of  thousands  of  gold   coins, 
which  was  found  in  the  Palatine    excavations, 
from  passing  at  once  into  the  dealers'  hands. 
Such  a  Commission  was  useless  when  the  burial — 
supposed   of  Theodoric — ^was   found   in   golden 
armour  at  Ravenna;  only  one  little  fragment  of 
that  splendid  treasure  was  recovered.     In  Eng- 
land we  know  of  the  reports  of  a  great  treasure 
found  on  the  field  at  Battle,  perhaps  from  the 
time  of  the  invasion,  perhaps  from  the  monastic 
shrine;  we  know  of  the  report  of  the  walled-up 
crypt  at  Canterbury,  and  the  sudden  wealth  of 
the  one  man  who  had  access  to  it.     Was  that 
the  treasure  store  of  Becket's  shrine  ?     But  we 
do  not  know  of  the  great  majority  of  such  dis- 
coveries, which  go  at  once  to  the  melting-pot. 
A  little  has  been  done  in  relaxing  such  claims 
by  the  Government,  but  not  enough  to  gain  the 
confidence  of  the  finders  in  general.     Even  public 
museums  have  to  agree  to  evade  the  law,  and 
do  so  openly,  as  in  the  case  of  jewellery  found 
in  London.     The  actual  profit  to  the  State  is 
trivial,  the  loss  is  immeasurable.  .  The  only  suc- 
cessful course  is  that  of  an  M.P.  in  a  cathedral 
city,  who  makes  friends  with  all  the  workmen 
in  the  place,  and  buys  illegally  everything  that 
is  found,  so  as  to  preserve  it  frpm  the  melting- 


102  PAYING  THE  FINDER 

pot.  When  the  evasion  of  the  law  is  felt  to  be 
the  only  right  course,  by  public  bodies  and  by 
private  men  of  high  character,  that  law  must 
pass  away. 

What  best  will  preserve  all  discoveries,  here 
and  abroad,  is  the  real  question.  I  venture  to 
urge  a  clean  sweep  of  all  the  imaginary  rights 
of  the  State  and  property  owners  over  unknown 
possessions .  Let  us  have  a  rule  that  the  roughest 
can  understand  and  obey, ''  Finding  is  keeping." 
In  all  legitimate  working,  let  everything  that  is 
not  already  known  to  the  State  or  property 
owner,  be  the  property  of  the  finder,  provided 
that  he  declares  it  as  soon  as  possible  to  the 
police,  or  a  post-office,  or  an  official.  If  not  de- 
clared, let  it  belong  to  any  informer  who  de- 
clares it.  The  Government  should  have  a  right 
of  inspection,  and  make  an  offer  if  the  object 
is  required.  If  the  offer  be  not  accepted,  then 
the  only  claim  of  compulsion  would  be  that  the 
object  must  be  put  up  to  public  auction.  Such 
is  needful  to  prevent  mere  obstinacy  entailing 
the  eventual  loss  of  things ;  but  the  price  should 
go  to  the  finder.  Thus  the  finder  would  have 
every  reason  for  publicity,  instead  of  every  reason 
for  concealment  as  at  present. 

In  carrying  this  out  in  the  East,  the  organiza- 
tion of  Inspectors  should  be  the  means  of  beating 
all  dealers  out  of  the  market,  by  sheer  competi- 


SCIENTIFIC  EXCAVATION  103 

tion.  Let  every  Inspector  be  looked  on  as  the 
best  buyer,  paying  a  full  local  price  on  the  spot, 
and  full  weight  of  gold  or  silver.  After  selec- 
tion at  the  museum,  sell  off  the  common  things 
to  tourists,  and  the  fine  objects  which  are  not 
required  sell  by  auction  in  London  or  Paris. 
By  open  competition  leave  no  commercial  foot- 
ing for  dealers;  and  the  profit  of  sales  would 
largely  help  the  Department  of  Antiquities. 


H.  Terms  for  Scientific  Excavation. 

If  it  is  the  best  policy  for  Government  not  to 
claim  the  whole,  or  a  part,  of  casual  discoveries 
that  cost  nothing,  it  is  indefensible  to  claim  the 
whole  (as  in  Greece  and  Turkey)  or  a  part  (as  in 
Egypt)  of  the  produce  of  scientific  excavation^ 
For  ( I )  such  work  is  very  costly  when  well  done ; 
(2)  the  country  gets  the  full  value  of  the  things 
found,  in  the  wages  paid,  on  an  average;  (3)  the 
proper  publication  is  expensive;  (4)  all  the  brunt 
of  the  law  falls  on  the  authorized  preserver  of 
things,  while  the  unauthorized  plunderer  goes  free. 
Often  have  I  been  checked  from  following  up  a 
discovery  by  the  precise  legal  limits  of  a  permis- 
sion, while  the  place  has  been  wrecked  at  once 
by  natives  without  any  record,  and  the  destruc- 
tion  of   much   of   the    material.     This    puts    a 
premium  on  allowing  native  wrecking  to  go  on^ 


I04         CLAIMS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

and  the  European  buying  up  the  proceeds, 
instead  of  working  openly.  Any  man  who  will 
sit  still  and  profit  by  the  illegal  destruction,  can 
have  all  he  buys;  if  he  works  hard  and  spends 
freely  on  proper  excavation  he  must  part 
with  half  to  the  Egyptian  Government.  There 
are  both  types  at  work,  especially  Consular 
Agents. 

What,  then,  can  the  Government  claim  from 
the   people   who   honestly  work   in    the   open  ? 
They  can  get  the  profit  of  all  buildings  and  fixed 
monuments,  and  of  all  large  blocks  of  sculpture 
and    statuary,   that    are    not    readily    portable. 
They  can  retain  the  right  of  selection  of  every- 
thing found,   on  giving  an  equitable  exchange 
from  the  objects   which  they   do   not  require, 
or  from  sculptures.     At   present  in  Egypt   half 
of  every  kind  of    object    found  is  ordered   by 
the  Government  to  be  retained.     The  things  that 
for   museums   are  of  great  value    (as    precisely 
dated  material)  are  roughly  halved,  dividing  up 
the  groups  which  were  found  together;  and  the 
things  are  then  sold  by  the  Government  to  the 
tourist,  who  will  give  a  fancy  price  for  things 
authenticated  by  the  museum.     If  a  scientific 
excavator  tries  to  keep  his  discoveries  together, 
he  must  pay  a  ludicrous   price — ten   times  the 
local    value— because    of    the    authenticity    of 


WRECKING  INFORMATION         105 

which  he  is  the  source.  He  is  fleeced  because 
he  is  doing  conscientious  scientific  work. 
Nothing  could  better  destroy  the  value  of  the 
excavations  which  are  properly  conducted.  It 
is  heart-rending,  after  paying  for  the  excava- 
tions, and  paying  the  workmen  full  local  value 
for  all  the  things  found,  to  have  to  leave  them 
without  history  or  use  as  mere  toys  for  tourists, 
because  the  Government  demands  from  the 
finder  a  third  purchase  at  a  fictitiously  inflated 
value  for  them.  This  is  where  no  private  benefit 
or  profit  is  involved,  but  where  the  only  bene- 
ficiaries would  be  public  museums,  which  urgently 
want  precisely  authenticated  and  dated  speci- 
mens. A  few  hundred  pounds  of  profit  by 
pandering  to  the  tourist  outweighs  in  official 
view  all  the  scientific  value  that  has  been  created 
by  most  careful  excavation. 

Such  has  been  the  course  of  British  control  in 
Egypt,  and  we  have  to  try  to  avert  such  follies 
in  fresh  lands. 

Further,  the  confidence  of  excavators  must  be 
retained,  if  they  are  expected  to  act  honourably. 
False  reports  should  not  be  circulated  by  officials ; 
and  applications  to  excavate  should  not  induce 
the  authorities  to  send  down  ignorant  natives  to 
wreck  sites  before  a  scientific  excavation  is  per- 
mitted, 


106         COST  OF  PRESERVATION 

Whatever  regulations  are  in  force  should  be 
a  minimum  of  claim.  Where  a  would-be  ex- 
cavator belongs  to  a  country  which  applies  more 
rigorous  laws,  such  laws  should  be  applied  to  his 
work.  It  is  absurd  to  put  on  the  same  footing 
the  work  done  for  a  free  country  and  that  done 
for  a  country  where  there  are  stringent  obstruc- 
tions to  such  research. 


J.  Finance. 

The  possible  finances  of  a  Department  of 
Antiquities  and  Museums  should  not  depend  on 
the  casual  opinion  in  a  changing  officialdom. 
In  England — before  the  convulsive  finance  of 
the  last  decade — the  Government  museums  cost 
2f  mills  (thousandths)  of  the  State  revenue. 
This  is  without  any  cost  of  excavating  or  any 
staff  to  conserve  monuments.  It  would  only  be 
reasonable  to  allow  4  mills,  or  id.  in  the  pound 
of  revenue,  as  the  least  which  such  a  Department 
could  work  upon.  This  is  only  a  third  of  the 
local  rate  for  libraries  and  museums  in  England, 
beside  the  Crown  taxes.  If  we  suppose,  say,  a 
revenue  of  10  millions,  which  is  possible  in 
Palestine  and  probable  in  Mesopotamia,  that 
would  mean  a  budget  of  £40,000.  For,  either 
country  this  might  supply : , 


STAFF  NEEDFUL 


107 


Director  and  8  or  10  staff 

Ten  Inspectors  and  personal  stafif 

One  hundred  local  guards 

Preservation  of  monuments 

Excavating 

Museum  building 

Libraries,  of  history  and  science 

Science  museums  . 

Total 


5,000 
6,000 
3,000 
5,000 
2,000 
10,000 
4,000 
5,000 

£40,000 


As    development    proceeded,    less    would    be 
required    for  building,   and  more  could   go    to 
work  in  the  country.     The  teaching  of  science 
is  a  separate  matter,  but  a  museum    must  be 
provided  quickly,  as  a  refuge  for  what  would 
otherwise  be  lost.     The  reckless  destruction  of 
Babylonian  antiquities  by  incompetent  excava- 
tion  must   be   brought   to   an   end.  'We  read: 
*'  The  excavations  .  .  .  have  been  for  the  most 
part    destructive    rather    than    scientific;    such 
objects  as  were  wanted  by  the  Museum  w^re  alone 
sought  after;  little  or  no  record  has  been  kept 
of  their  discovery.  .  .  .     The  so-called  excava- 
tions conducted   by  the  Museum  in  1880  were 
simply  a  scandal."     We  read  of  ancient  maga- 
zines in  Assyria  full  of  coloured  tiles,  of  iron 
tools  and  weapons,  of  pottery,  of  which  hardly  a 
specimen  has  reached  Europe.    Sixty-eight  cases 


io8  LOSSES  OF  ANTIQUITIES 

of  the  finest  Assyrian  sculpture  were  sunk  in 
the  Tigris  without  any  attempt  to  recover  them. 
A  whole  boatload  of  sculptures  and  antiquities 
were  likewise  lost  in  the  Nile.  The  search  for 
literary  remains,  tablets,  papyri,  and  inscrip- 
tions, has  been  conducted,  both  in  Egypt  and 
Mesopotamia,  with  utter  disregard  for  all  other 
antiquities  or  for  any  knowledge  of  the  civiliza- 
tion or  history. 

Full  publication  must  be  insisted  on  for  all 
excavations.  At  present  a  great  deal  has  been 
done  by  America,  Italy,  and  Ffance,  of  which 
there  is  scarcely  any  record  yet  issued.  Work 
goes  on  for  ten  or  twenty  years  with  scarcely  an 
effort  to  render  it  of  scientific  service.  Some- 
times— as  at  Delphi — all  those  concerned  die 
before  anything  is  issued,  and  an  account  far 
from  accurate  has  to  be  put  together  by  strangers. 

A  vigorous  and  impartial  organization  is 
essential,  if  we  would  do  our  duty;  and  the  staff 
outlined  above  would  be  the  very  least  that  could 
control  the  great  interests  which  would  be  in 
their  charge. 

K.  Jerusalem  Problems. 

The  pledge  of  placing  Palestine  under  Jewish 
management  raises  many  problems.  The  idea  is 
essentially  an  ethical  one,  and  therefore  it  must 


CONTROL  IN  JERUSALEM  109 

not  blind  us  to  other  ethical  views.  While  we 
cordially  accept  it,  we  must  remember  that  the 
Amorite  before,  and  the  Arab  after,  have  each 
occupied  the  land  longer  than  the  Jew  has. 
The  works  of  those  other  kindred  races  must 
each  be  respected.  Then  to  all  Christian  nations 
the  land  is  quite  as  sacred,  as  being  that  of  the 
Jewish  Head  of  the  Church  and  His  Disciples. 
These  interests  must  equally  be  respected. 

It  is  evident,  then,  that,  so  far  as  the  control  is 
in  Jewish  hands,  it  must  be  chosen  so  as  to  secure 
men  of  the  right  type.  It  will  be  equally  Jewish 
control,  and  equally  fulfil  our  pledges,  if  it  be 
under  Western  business  men  from  America, 
or  patriotic  historians  as  the  Maccabeans,  or 
ignorant  Talmudists  from  Eastern  Europe, 

On  the  nature  of  the  control  exercised  will 
depend  the  ideals  aimed  at.  That  there  cannot 
be  an  ignoring  of  all  that  happened  since  previous 
Jewish  rule,  is  evident.  There  cannot  be  a  re- 
placement of  the  proclamation  of  death  to  any 
Gentile  who  entered  the  court  of  the  Temple. 
It  is  very  questionable  if  there  would  be  any 
restoration  of  a  temple,  of  either  Solomon's, 
Ezekiel's,  or  Herod's  type.  Is  the  Torah  or  the 
Talmud  to  be  the  rule  of  action  ?  Is  the  nation 
to  be  modelled  on  that  of  the  kings,  with  free 
mixture  with  Gentiles  ?  Or  that  of  the  Egyptian 
Jews,    as    Philo,    who    repudiated    Babylonian 


no  HERITAGE  OF  SAMARIA 

casuistry  ?  Or  that  of  the  Palestinian  Talmud, 
or  of  mediaeval  Talmudism,  or  the  Neo- Judaism 
of  Bayswater  ?  The  Goyim  have  a  different 
degree  of  sympathy  with  each  of  these  ideals, 
and  await  anxiously  to  know  what  will  be 
claimed.  The  questions  have  by  no  means  been 
answered  by  the  Jewish  colonies  in  Palestine; 
those  are  only  agricultural,  they  have  never  had 
free  development,  and  they  have  not  included 
the  various  types  which  will  now  arrive. 

The  nature  of  the  dominant  party  of  the  new 
settlement  is  a  crucial  matter  for  the  remains  of 
past  civilizations.  A  Wall  Street  broker  would 
perhaps  preserve  nothing  that  did  not  conduce 
to  modern  profits;  a  Lemberg  Talmudist  would 
probably  delight  in  wiping  out  all  traces  of  the 
Canaanite  or  the  Roman. 

Ancient  grudges  must  not  be  revived.  The 
Samaritans  have  maintained  their  worship  un- 
broken since  the  time  of  the  kings.  They  repre- 
sent the  early  capital  of  Shechem,  the  older 
Judaism  before  the  later  establishment  of  Jeru- 
salem. They  are  the  last  representatives  in 
place,  of  the  tribes  who  joined  in  national  worship 
under  Hezekiah  arid  Josiah.  It  was  only  the 
post-Babylonian  Talmudic  fanaticism  that  sun- 
dered the  Jew  of  the  Return  from  his  ancient 
kindred  of  Israel.  It  is  a  nice  question,  which  is 
the  lawful  successor  of  that  Judaism  which  was 


CONTROL  OF  HOLY  PLACES       in 

led  away  to  Babylon — -the  Judaism  of  the  kings 
and  the  prophets.  There  is  no  doubt  that  the 
Jew  of  Solomon  or  later  kings  was  in  attitude 
much  nearer  to  the  Samaritan  of  the  Torah  than 
he  was  to  the  later  Jew  of  the  Talmud.  The 
Samaritan  must  have  justice  after  2,500  years, 
and  be  put  in  as  full  control  in  the  Shechem 
region  as  the  modern  Jew  is  in  Jerusalem. 

As  to  the  control  of  Holy  Places,  any  Jewish 
state    must    expect    large    powers.     Hebron    is 
obviously   of  much  greater  importance  to  the 
Jew  than  to  anyone  else,  and  it  should  be  en- 
tirely in  Jewish  hands,  as  containing  the  tombs 
of  the  patriarchs.     In  Jerusalem  the  Muhamma- 
dan  claims  are  certainly  inferior  to  those  of  Jew 
or  Christian;  and  so  long  as  Mecca  and  Medina 
are  barred  against  Christians,  so  long  Muham- 
madans  cannot  expect  to  share  in  the  control 
of  Jerusalem.     We  may  hope  to  see  that  exqui- 
site and  unsectarian  building  the  Dome  of  the 
Rock   maintained   as   the   best   covering   for   a 
site  that  is  venerated  by  many  faiths. 

The  condition  of  the  city  of  Jerusalem  is  an 
urgent  problem  to  any  new  State.  Much  build- 
ing will  result  from  any  increase  of  prosperity 
and  population.  Can  anyone  wish  to  build  on 
the  top  of  deep  rubbish  mounds,  saturated  with 
ages  of  residence,  over  ground  tunnelled  and  cut 
up  with  cisterns,  full  of  old  sewage,  and  without 


112         A  NEW  SUBURB  NEEDED 

any  chance  of  laying  out  a  clear  drainage  ? 
All  modern  notions  of  habitation  and  sanitation 
are  against  piling  more  on  the  top  of  the  ruins 
of  Jerusalem.  If  a  large  new  population  were  to 
be  placed  on  the  old  city  they  could  see  nothing 
of  it,  any  more  than  the  Londoner  sees  of  Roman 
London.  The  people  themselves  will  entirely 
obstruct  the  place  which  they  venerate.  Already 
a  German  is  bewailing  the  necessary  commercial- 
izing of  Jerusalem. 

The  only  clean  course  would  be  to  extend  a 
new  suburb,  either  one  to  three  miles  down  the 
Vale  of  Rephaim  to  the  south-west,  where  the 
railway  now  is, or  to  a  better  site  two  miles  north- 
west in  the  fine  valley  running  down  from  Ramah, 
with  water-supply  entirely  clear  of  Jerusalem. 
Electric  trams  would  place  either  site  within  a 
few  minutes'  access  of  the  city.  The  present 
city  is  not  in  a  position  at  all  adapted  for  any 
business  or  affairs;  it  is  merely  the  successor  of 
an  inaccessible  hill  fortress.  It  had  bad  access 
and  bad  water.  Its  only  claim  is  its  historical 
and  religious  value  to  mankind.  The  best  way 
to  respect  that  value  is  reverently  to  place 
modern  affairs  on  one  side,  in  ground  suited  to 
present  life.  These  new  sites  should  be  given 
to  all  who  will  move  out  of  the  Holy  Gty  to  the 
suburb.  A  total  prohibition  of  building  in  the 
old   city   would   shift   out  the   population  in  a 


JERUSALEM  IN  THE  FUTURE      113 

generation  or  so.  The  ideal  could  then  be 
attained  of  clearing  it  all  down  to  the  Solomonic 
level,  excepting  the  churches  and  important 
buildings.  On  the  old  foundations  a  rebuilding 
might  be  occupied  by  public  offices,  a  few  rest- 
houses  for  pilgrims,  and  a  hospital  where  Jews 
could  have  the  longed-for  privilege  of  resting  in 
their  last  hours. 

Thus  this  little  plot  of  rock  within  the  walls, 
less  than  200  acres,  only  a  quarter  of  a  square 
mile,  could  be  reserved  as  the  sanctuary  of 
three  faiths — a  space  for  peace  and  meditation  ."l 

Let  us  not  repeat  the  great  mistakes  made  in 
building  the  modern  Athens  and  modern  Rome 
on  the  top  of  the  ancient  city,  which  gives  the 
value  to  the  site.  If  the  great  blocks  of  flats 
had  be^n  put  a  mile  or  two  to  one  side  as  a 
new  suburb,  the  past  city  would  have  been  the 
pride  and  joy  of  the  inhabitants.  In  Jerusalem 
this  objection  has  still  greater  force,  as  its  asso- 
ciations will  clash  painfully  with  all  the  growing 
needs  of  a  new  capital.  Let  Western  Jerusalem 
be  as  convenient  and  busy  as  any  growing  city, 
supplying  all  the  needs  of  the  large  population 
that  will  be  drawn  by  the  memories  that  will 
find  their  fulfilment  in  the  city  of  Solomon,  once 
more  visible,  treasured  and  beloved. 


n.. 

B. 

B. 

M.- 

D. 

M.- 

D. 

E. 

H 

.  C. 

H 

.  T. 

J- 

J 

E. 

K, 

.  S.- 

K. 

B. 

L. 

A. 

M. 

P. 

F. 

P. 

M.- 

R. 

B. 

S. 

M.- 

S. 

,  T. 

v.- 

J 


LETTERS  OF  REFERENCE  IN 
THE  TEXT. 

-Ancient  Egypt. 

-Bliss,  Mound  of  Many  Cities,  1894. 

-Bliss  and  Macalister,  Excavations  in  Palestine, 
1898-igoo. 

-De  Morgan,  DSlSgation  en  Perse,  Recherches 
ArcMologiques. 

-Dieulafoy,  Marcel,  L'Art  Antique  de  la  Perse, 
1884. 

'International  Standard  Bible  Encyclopadia^ 
Chicago,  1915.  (Summaries  <5f  recent  work, 
2225-2235.) 

-Hogarth,  D.  G.,  Carchemish,  1914. 

-Harvard  Theological  Review,  1909-1911. 

-Jacoby,  A.,  Geographische  Mosaik  von  Madeba, 
1905. 

-Journal  of  Egyptian  ArchcBology. 

-King,  Leonard  W.,  History  of  Sumer  and  Akkad, 
1910. 

-King,  Leonard  W.,  History  of  Babylon,  19 15. 

-Liverpool,  Annals  of  ArchcBology. 

-Macalister,  R.  A,  S.,  Excavations  of  Gezer,  191 2. 

-Palestine  Exploration  Fund,  Quarterly  Statement. 

-Peters,  John  P.,  Painted  Tombs  in  Necropolis  of 
Maris  sa,  1905. 

-Revue  Biblique. 

-Steuermagel,  C,  Tell  el  Mutesellim,  1908. 

-Sellin,  E.,  Tell  Ta'annek,  1904. 

-Vincent,  Hughes,  Canaan.  Paris,  1907.  (Valu- 
able general  summary  to  date.) 


"4 


J 


INDEX 


iEoEAN  influence,  i8 
Ahab,  palace  of,  lo 
Alexandria  camp  destroyed,  84 
Altar  of  Ta'anak,  11 
Amarna,  Tell,  letters  of,  52,  54 
American  expedition  to  Syria,  3 

museum  management,  98 
Amorites,  civilization  of,  25 

full-length  burial,  26 

generic  name,  24 

kin  to  Hyksos,  25-6 

pillar  worship,  27 

Semitic,  24 
Annals  kept  in  Syria,  15 
Antinoe  destroyed,  84 
Antiquities  Law,  proclamation  on, 

83 
Antiquity      department      selling 

buildings,  85 
Aristotle's  Natural  History^  7 
Art  a  part  of  history,  2 
Ashtareth,  worship  of,  12 
Askelon,  8 

Assyrian  discoveries,  48 
Aswan  papyri,  12 
Atergatis,  temple  of,  8 
Australian  soldiers  save  mosaic,  5 

Babylon,  first  dynasty,  date  of,  64 
of  Nebuchadnezzar,  46 
the  capital  since  Hammurabi, 
61 
Babylonia  the    source    of   com- 
merce and  science,  3 
Babylonian  profit  from  Persian 

rule,  45 
Berlin  plunder  from  Thebes,  84 
Berosos,  accuracy  of,  64 
Beth  Shean,  9,  22 


Board  for  antiquities,  91 

Bosra,  publication  of,  6 

British    Museum    plunder    from 

Meydum,  85 
Bronze  Age  in  Syria,  23-24 
Burial,  burnt,  Canaanite,  26-27 
full-length,  Amorite,  26 

Canaan  in  relation  to  the  West,  34 
Canaanite  burials,  cremated,  26-27 

age,  neolithic,  30-31 

worship,  31 
Carchemish  excavations,  50 
Caves  under  sanctuary,  for  burial, 

27 
Cedars  fetched  from  Lebanon,  14 
Cemeteries,  earliest,  72 
Cherethi,  21 

Christian  buildings  in  Syria,  3 
Chronology  of  Susa,  74 

reduction  of,  63-66 
Civilization  of  Persia,  45 
Colonnade  at  Samaria,  5 
Cooking  by  hot  stones,  33 
Copper  Age,  69 
Copper,  hammered  or  cast,  69 
Cremation  performed  in  cave,  32 
Cretans  supposed  in  Palestine,  21 
Cup  markings,  31 
Cyprus,  destruction  in,  98 
Cyriades  appointed  by  Shapur,  40 

Depth  of  ruins  in  Jerusalem,  16 
Derketo,  fish-goddiess,  8 
Destruction  of  results  by  official 

decree,  104 
Destructions,  4,  14-54,  84-88,  98 

107 
Direction  of  research,  93 


"5 


ii6 


INDE^t 


Discoveries  to  be  encouraged,  90 
Dome  of  the  Rock,  11 1 
Donors'  names  on  mosaic,  5 
Dungi  of  Ur,  62 
fine  work  of,  63 

Economics  in  history,  3 
Egyptian  influence  on  Palestine, 

18 
Elam,  earliest  civilization,  73 

fine  carving  from,  76 
Electrotypes  of  gold-work  needed, 

99 
Elephantine  temple  destroyed,  84 
Epictetus  on  the  cattle,  82 
Evasion  of  law  by  museums,  100, 

loi 
Excavating,  careful,  6 

need  of  thorough,  73,  94 
Excavations  required,  7,  8,  16,  30, 

41,  42,  44,  46,  50,  61,  62,  63 
Expenditure,  minimum,  requisite, 

107 

Female  descent  of  royalty,  71 

Finance,  106 

Fixed  income  needed  for  work, 

106 
Flints,  Solutrean  and  Magdalen- 

ian,  75 
Florence,  plunder  from  Thebes,  85 
Forgery,  punishment  of,  83 
Foundation  sacrifices,  28-29 
Fresco  of  Amarna  destroyed,  86 
Fusion  of  Sumerian  and  Semite,67 

Geologic  history  of  man,  34 
Gezer,  Amorite  city,  26 

Hebrew  city,  11 

tombs,  8,  19,  20 
Glazed-brick  figures,  47 
Gold  coins  from  Palatine,  loi 
Government  monopoly,  99 
Gudea  of  Lagash,  6i 

an  architect,  62 

statues  in  Paris,  62 

Hammurabi,  administration  of,  55 
art  of,  55 
code,  of,  56 


Haram  area  Herodian,  17 
Hebrew  inscriptions,  10,  11 
Hebron  centre  of  Jewish  interest, 

III 
Helmets,  early  use  of,  70 
Heraclius  ruined  Persia,  41 
High  places,  worship  at,  12,  27,  31 
History,  different  materials  of,  2 

the  crown  of  natural  science,  2 
Hittite  cemeteries,  51 

destruction  in  Sumer,  60 
Hittites,  early  ages  of,  51 

possibly  of  Aryan  speech,  49 

source  of,  49 
Holy  Places,  custody  of,  82,  87, 

lit 
Horse  brought  in  by  Kassites,  52 
Hyksos  kin  to  Amorites,  25-26 

pottery  at  Gezer,  19 

Ideals  a  part  of  history,  2 
Indian    contrasted    with    Baby- 
lonian law,  57 
Infant  burials  at  Gezer,  31 
Ivory  carving  from  Elam,  76 

Jehu,  palace  of,  10 
Jericho,  Amorite  city,  26 

Cypriote  pottery  at,  13 

Greek  pottery  at,  8 
Jeroboam  II.,  palace  of,  10 
Jerusalem,   new  suburb  needed, 

18,   III,  112 

problems  of,  108 
Jewish  control,  109 

Kassites  Aryans  in  Babylonia,  52 

parallel  to  Parthians,  53 
Kefti,  Cilicia,  21 
Kimmerian  invasion,  48 

Lachish,  Amorite  City  of,  26 
Laws  of  Hammurabi,  a  city  code, 

57 
contrasted  with   Indian, 

nature  of,  56 
Sumerian  and  Semitic,  uni- 
ted, 58 


INDEX 


ii; 


Leather  work  copied  in  pottery,  20 
Letter  of  Zimrida,  30 
Losses  of  antiquities,  107-108 

Magdalenian  flints  in  Egypt,  75 
Mareshah  excavated,  8 
painted  tombs  at,  7 
Marriage  laws,  58 
Masseboth  pillars,  27,  28,  31 
Megiddo,  10 

Amorite  city  of,  26 
Meshetta  Palace,  6 
Mithra  worship,  28 
Monopolies  of  governments,  99 
Monotheism    fixed   in  Captivity, 

12 
Monuments,  conservation  of,  84 
Mosaic  map,  4 
Mosaics  in  Palestine,  4 
Museums  administration,  96 

first  and  second  class  of,  96 

lighting  of,  97 

not  an  architectural  show,  97 
Mutesellim,  Tell,  10 

Naram-Sin,  date  of,  65 

founder  of  civilization,  66 
widespread  remains  of,  68 

Omri,  palace  of,  10 

Palestrina  mosaic,  7 

Palmyra,  destruction  of,  41 

Parthian  civilization,  43 

Parthians  like  Kassites,  53 

Payment  for  finds  essential,  95 

Pelethi,  21 

Persian  art,  importance  of,  41 -421 

45 

rule  supreme,  44-45 
Persian  Gulf,  silting  up,  68 
Petra,  publication  of,  6 
Phalanx  formation,  70 
Philistines,  origin  of,  21,  22 
Pillars  of  stone,  27,  28,  31 
Plundering  of  museums,  99 
Pottery  from  leather  work,  20 

Syrian  patterns  of,  23 
Prices,  laws  on,  59 
Proclamation  on  Antiquities,  83 


Publishing  essential,  99,  108 
by  Leyden  Museum,  98 

Reproduction  and  worship,  28 
Requisites  in  excavating,  94 

Sacrifices  under  foundation,  28-29 
Samaria,  Greek  town,  8 
palaces  at,  9 
temple  at,  5 
Samaritans'   unbroken    worship, 

no 
Samuel,  invocation  of,  27 
Sassanian  rule,  40 

work  better  than  Roman,  41 
Science  in  Mesopotamia,  39 

museum  needful  at  once,  107 
Scientific  excavating,  terms  for, 

103 
Scythian  migration,  9,  48 

Parthians,  42 
Seizure  of  discoveries  by  govern- 
ments, 100 
Shapur  I.  in  Antioch,  40 
Shema,  seal  of,  10 
Siloam  inscription  cursive,  10 

destroyed,  14 
Sinai  monuments  destroyed,  86 
Sites,  protection  of,  88 
Smuggling  of  antiquities,  100 
Solutrean  flints  in  Susa,  75 
Style  no  proof  of  absolute  age,  65 
Sumerian  basis  of  modern  com- 
merce, 71 
civilization,  69 
persistence,  60 
traders  in  Memphis,  39 
Susa,  date  of  rise  of,  74 , 

earliest  civilization  in,  74 
Synagogues  in  Galilee,  4 
Syria  incoherent,  53 
Syrian  pattern  on  pottery,  23 
ports,  traffic  of,  15 

Ta'anak,  11 

Tablets,  cuneiform,  13 

Temple  foundations  on  rock,  17 

security  in  Babylonia,  47 
Theft  encouraged,  92 
Theodoric,  burial  of,  robbed,  loi 


Ii8 


INDEX 


Tombs  of  Latin  kings  destroyed, 

88 
Treasure- trove  laws  and  reform, 

101-102 

Unuamen,  expedition  of,  14 
Usarken  vase  at  Samaria,  10 

Valerian,  captivity  of,  40 
Venus,  observations  of,  64 


Wages  in  Mesopotamia,  5^ 
War   a    struggle    of   the    gods, 

70 
Workmen  must  be  paid  for  finds, 

95 
Worship  at  high  places,  12 
of  Ashtareth.  12 


Zakariyeh,  Tell,  8,  13 


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